PHILOSOPHIES  ANCIENT  AND  MODERN 


SCHOPENHAUER 


RELIGIONS:   ANCIENT  AND   MODERN 

Animism.    By  EDWARD  OLODD,  author  of  The  Story  of  Creation. 
Pantheism.     By  JAMES  ALLANSON  PICTOK,  author  of  The  Religion  oj  Die 

Universe. 
The  Religions  of  Ancient  China.    By  Professor  OILKS,  LL.D. ,  Professor 

of  Chinese  in  the  University  of  Cambridge. 
The  Religion  of  Ancient  Greece.     By  JAN*  HARBISON,  Lecturer  at 

Newnhara  College,  Cambridge,  author  of  Prolegomena  to  Study  of  Greek 

Religion. 
Islam.    By  the  Rt  Hon.  AMBER  An  SYBD,  of  the  Judicial  Committee  of  His 

Majesty's  Privy  Council,  author  of  The  Spirit  of  I  flam,  and  Ethics  of  Islam. 
Magic  and  Fetishism.     By  Dr.  A.  C.  HADDON,  F.R.8.,  Lecturer  on 

Ethnology  at  Cambridge  University. 
The  Religion  of  Ancient  Egypt.    By  Professor  W.  M.  FLINDERS  PJCTRIE, 

F.R.S. 
The  Religion  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria.    By  THEOPHILUS  G.  PINCHES, 

late  of  the  British  Museum. 
Early  Buddhism.    By  Professor  RHYS  DAVIDS,  LL.D.,  late  Secretary  of 

The  Royal  Asiatic  Society. 
Hinduism.    By  Dr.  L.  D.  BARNETT,  of  the  Department  of  Oriental  Printed 

Books  and  MSB.,  British  Museum. 
Scandinavian  Religion.    By  WILLIAM  A.  C&AIOIK,  Joint  Editor  of  the 

Oxford  English  Dictionary. 
Celtic  Religion.    By  Professor  ANWYL,  Professor  of  Welsh  at  University 

College,  Aberystwyth. 
The  Mythology  of  Ancient  Britain  and  Ireland.     By  CHARLES 

SQUIRE,  author  of  The  Mythology  of  the  British  Islands. 

Judaism.    By  ISRAEL  ABRAHAMS,  Lecturer  in  Talmudic  Literature  in  Cam- 
bridge University,  author  of  Jewish  L4fe  in  the  Middle  Ages. 
The  Religion  of  Ancient  Rome.    B,y  CYRIL  BAILEY,  M.A. 
Shinto,  The  Ancient  Religion  of  Japan.    By  w.  G.  ASTON,  c.  M.  G. 
The  Religion  of  Ancient  Mexico  and  Peru.    By  LEWIS  SPENCK,  M.A. 
Early  Christianity.    Bv  S.  B.  BLACK,  Professor  at  M'Gill  University. 
The  Psychological  Origin  and  Nature  of  Religion.    By  Professor 

The  Religion  of  Ancient  Palestine.    By  STANLEY  A.  COOK. 
Mithraism.    By  W.  J.  PHYTHIAN-ADAMS. 

PHILOSOPHIES 
Early  Greek  Philosophy.    By  A.  W.  BENN,  author  of  The  Philosophy  oj 

Greece,  Rationalism  in  the  Nineteenth  Century. 
Stoicism.     By  Professor  ST.  GEORGE  STOCK,  author  of  Deductive  Logic, 

editor  of  the  Apology  of  Plato,  etc. 
Plato.     By  Professor  A.  E.  TAYLOB.  St.  Andrews  University,  author  of 

The  Problem  of  Conduct. 
Scholasticism.    By  Father  RICKABY,  8.J. 
Hobbes.    By  Professor  A.  E.  TAYLOR. 
Locke.    By  Professor  ALEXANDER,  of  Owens  College. 
Comte  and  Mill    By  T.  WHITTARER,  author  of  The  Neoplatonists  Apollo- 

nius  of  Tyana  and  other  Essays. 
Herbert  Spencer.     By  W.  H.  HUDSON,  author  of  An.  Introduction  to 

Spencer's  Philosophy. 
Schopenhauer.    By  T.  WHITTAKER. 
Berkeley.    By  Professor  CAMPBELL  FRASER,  D.C.L.,  LL.D. 
Swede  nborg.    By  Dr.  BE  WALL. 

Nietzsche:  His  Life  and  Works.    By  A.VTHOHY  il  LUDOTOL 
Bergson.    By  JOSEPH  SOLOMON. 
Rationalism.    By  J.  M.  ROBERTSON.        _ 
Pragmatism.    By  D.  L.  MURRAY. 
Rudolf  Eucken.    By  W.  TUDOR-JOHW 


SCHOPENHAUER 


By 

THOMAS    WHITTAKER 

AUTHOR    OF    *  COMT£    AND    MILL,'    ETC. 


NEW   YORK 
DODGE    PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

2I4-22O    EAST    23RD    STREET 


CONTENTS 

OHAP.  pAOE 

i.  LIFE  AND  WRITINGS,  ......  1 

ii.  THEORY  OP  KNOWLEDGE, 16 

in.  METAPHYSICS  OF  THE  WILL,      ....  29 

iv.  ESTHETICS, 49 

v.  ETHICS, 65 

vi.  HISTORICAL  SIGNIFICANCE,          ....  86 

SELECTED  WORKS,       .        ,  93 


2061464 


SCHOPENHAUER 

CHAPTER  I 

LIFE   AND   WRITINGS 

ARTHUR  SCHOPENHAUER  may  be  distinctively 
described  as  the  greatest  philosophic  writer  of 
his  century.  So  evident  is  this  that  he  has 
sometimes  been  regarded  as  having  more  import- 
ance in  literature  than  in  philosophy;  but  this 
is  an  error.  As  a  metaphysician  he  is  second  to 
no  one  since  Kant.  Others  of  his  age  have  sur- 
passed him  in  system  and  in  comprehensiveness ; 
but  no  one  has  had  a  firmer  grasp  of  the  essen- 
tial and  fundamental  problems  of  philosophy. 
On  the  theory  of  knowledge,  the  nature  of  reality, 
and  the  meaning  of  the  beautiful  and  the  good, 
he  has  solutions  to  offer  that  are  all  results  of  a 
characteristic  and  original  way  of  thinking. 

In  one  respect,  as  critics  have  noted,  his  spirit 
is  different  from  that  of  European  philosophy  in 
general.  What  preoccupies  him  in  a  special  way 
is  the  question  of  evil  in  the  world.  Like  the 

A  I 


SCHOPENHAUER 

philosophies  of  the  East,  emerging  as  they  do 
without  break  from  religion,  Schopenhauer's 
philosophy  is  in  its  outcome  a  doctrine  of  redemp- 
tion from  sin.  The  name  of  pessimism  commonly 
applied  to  it  is  in  some  respects  misleading, 
though  it  was  his  own  term ;  but  it  is  correct  if 
understood  as  he  explained  it.  As  he  was  accus- 
tomed to  insist,  his  final  ethical  doctrine  coincides 
with  that  of  all  the  religions  that  aim,  for  their 
adepts  or  their  elect,  at  deliverance  from  'this 
evil  world.'  But,  as  the  '  world-fleeing  '  religions 
have  their  mitigations  and  accommodations,  so 
also  has  the  philosophy  of  Schopenhauer.  At 
various  points  indeed  it  seems  as  if  a  mere 
change  of  accent  would  turn  it  into  optimism. 

This  preoccupation  does  not  mean  indifference 
to  the  theoretical  problems  of  philosophy.  No 
one  has  insisted  more  strongly  that  the  end  of 
philosophy  is  pure  truth,  and  that  only  the  few 
who  care  about  pure  truth  have  any  concern  with 
it.  But  for  Schopenhauer  the  desire  for  specula- 
tive truth  does  not  by  itself  suffice  to  explain 
the  impulse  of  philosophical  inquiries.  On  one 
side  of  his  complex  character,  he  had  more 
resemblance  to  the  men  who  turn  from  the  world 
to  religion,  like  St.  Augustine,  than  to  the  normal 
type  of  European  thinker,  represented  pre-emi- 


LIFE   AND   WRITINGS 

nently  by  Aristotle.  He  was  a  temperamental 
pessimist,  feeling  from  the  first  the  trouble  of 
existence ;  and  here  he  finds  the  deepest  motive 
for  the  desire  to  become  clear  about  it.  He  saw 
in  the  world,  what  he  felt  in  himself,  a  vain  effort 
after  ever  new  objects  of  desire  which  give  no 
permanent  satisfaction  ;  and  this  view,  becoming 
predominant,  determined,  not  indeed  all  the  ideas 
of  his  philosophy,  but  its  general  complexion  as 
a  '  philosophy  of  redemption.' 

With  his  pessimism,  personal  misfortunes  had 
nothing  to  do.  He  was,  and  always  recognised 
that  he  was,  among  the  most  fortunately  placed 
of  mankind.  He  does  not  hesitate  to  speak 
sometimes  of  his  own  happiness  in  complete 
freedom  from  the  need  to  apply  himself  to  any 
compulsory  occupation.  This  freedom,  as  he  has 
put  gratefully  on  record,  he  owed  to  his  father, 
Heinrich  Floris  Schopenhauer,  who  was  a  rich 
merchant  of  Danzig,  where  the  philosopher  was 
born  on  the  22nd  of  February  1788.  Both  his 
parents  were  of  Dutch  ancestry.  His  mother, 
Johanna  Schopenhauer,  won  celebrity  as  a  novel- 
ist; and  his  sister,  Adele,  also  displayed  some 
literary  talent.  Generalising  from  his  own  case, 
Schopenhauer  holds  that  men  of  intelligence 
derive  their  character  from  their  father  and 


SCHOPENHAUER 

their  intellect  from  their  mother.  With  his 
mother,  however,  he  was  not  on  sympathetic 
terms,  as  may  be  read  in  the  biographies.  His 
father  intended  him  for  a  mercantile  career,  and 
with  this  view  began  to  prepare  him  from  the 
first  to  be  a  cosmopolitan  man  of  the  world.  The 
name  of  Arthur  was  given  to  him  because  it  is 
spelt  alike  in  the  leading  European  languages. 
He  was  taken  early  to  France,  where  he  resided 
from  1797  to  1799,  learning  French  so  well  that 
on  his  return  he  had  almost  forgotten  his  German. 
Portions  of  the  years  1803  to  1804  were  spent 
in  England,  France,  Switzerland,  and  Austria.  In 
England  he  was  three  months  at  a  Wimbledon 
boarding-school  kept  by  a  clergyman.  This  ex- 
perience he  found  extremely  irksome.  He  after- 
wards became  highly  proficient  in  English :  was 
always  pleased  to  be  taken  for  an  Englishman, 
and  regarded  both  the  English  character  and 
intelligence  as  on  the  whole  the  first  in  Europe ; 
but  all  the  more  deplorable  did  he  find  the  oppres- 
sive pietism  which  was  the  special  form  taken  in 
the  England  of  that  period  by  the  reaction  against 
the  French  Revolution.  He  is  never  tired  of 
denouncing  that  phase  of  'cold  superstition,' 
the  dominance  of  which  lasted  during  his  life- 
time ;  for  the  publication  of  Mill's  Liberty  and  of 
4 


LIFE   AND   WRITINGS 

Darwin's  Origin  of  Species,  which  may  be  con- 
sidered as  marking  the  close  of  it,  came  only  the 
year  before  his  death. 

The  only  real  break  in  the  conformity  of 
Schopenhauer's  circumstances  to  his  future  career 
came  in  1805,  when  he  was  placed  in  a  merchant's 
office  at  Hamburg,  whither  his  father  had 
migrated  in  disgust  at  the  annexation  of  his 
native  Danzig,  then  under  a  republican  con- 
stitution of  its  own,  by  Prussia  in  1793.  Soon 
afterwards  his  father  died  ;  but  out  of  loyalty  he 
tried  for  some  time  longer  to  reconcile  himself 
to  commercial  life.  Finding  this  at  length  im- 
possible, he  gained  permission  from  his  mother, 
in  1807,  to  leave  the  office  for  the  gymnasium. 
At  this  time  he  seems  to  have  begun  his  classical 
studies,  his  education  having  hitherto  been  ex- 
clusively modern.  They  were  carried  on  first  at 
Gotha  and  then  at  Weimar.  In  1809  he  entered 
the  university  of  Gottingen  as  a  student  of 
medicine.  This,  however,  was  with  a  view  only 
to  scientific  studies,  not  to  practice ;  and  he  trans- 
ferred himself  to  the  philosophical  faculty  in 
1810.  Generally  he  was  little  regardful  of 
academical  authority.  His  father's  deliberately 
adopted  plan  of  letting  him  mix  early  with  the 
world  had  given  him  a  certain  independence  of 
5 


SCHOPENHAUER 

judgment.  At  Gottingen,  however,  he  received 
an  important  influence  from  his  teacher,  G.  E. 
Sohulze  (known  by  the  revived  scepticism  of 
his  JSneaidemus),  who  advised  him  to  study  Plato 
and  Kant  before  Aristotle  and  Spinoza.  From 
1811  to  1813  he  was  at  Berlin,  where  he  heard 
Fichte,  but  was  not  impressed.  In  1813  the 
degree  of  Doctor  of  Philosophy  was  conferred  on 
him  at  Jena  for  the  dissertation  On  the  Fourfold 
Root  of  the  Principle  of  Sufficient  Reason 
( Ueber  die  vierfache  Wurzel  des  Satzes  vom  zu- 
reichenden  Grunde,  2nd  ed.,  1847).  This  was  the 
first  result  of  his  Kantian  studies.  In  the  same 
year  he  began  to  be  acquainted  with  Goethe  at 
Weimar,  where  his  mother  and  sister  had  gone 
to  reside  in  1806.  A  consequence  of  this 
acquaintance  was  that  he  took  up  and  further 
developed  Goethe's  theory  of  colours.  His  dis- 
sertation Ueber  das  Sehen  und  die  Farben  was 
published  in  1816.  A  second  edition  did  not 
appear  till  1854;  but  in  the  meantime  he  had 
published  a  restatement  of  his  doctrine  in  Latin, 
entitled  Theoria  Colorum  Physiologica  (1830). 
This,  however,  was  an  outlying  part  of  his  work. 
He  had  already  been  seized  by  the  impulse  to 
set  forth  the  system  of  philosophy  that  took 
shape  in  him,  as  he  says,  by  some  formative 
6 


LIFE   AND   WRITINGS 

process  of  which  he  could  give  no  conscious 
account.  His  great  work,  Die  Welt  als  Wille 
und  Vorstellung,  was  ready  for  publication 
before  the  end  of  1818,  and  was  published  with 
the  date  1819.  Thus  he  is  one  of  the  most 
precocious  philosophers  on  record.  For  in  that 
single  volume,  written  before  he  was  thirty,  the 
outlines  of  his  whole  system  are  fixed.  There 
is  some  development  later,  and  there  are  endless 
new  applications  and  essays  towards  confirma- 
tion from  all  sources.  His  mind  never  rested, 
and  his  literary  power  gained  by  exercise.  Still, 
it  has  been  said  with  truth,  that  there  never 
was  a  greater  illusion  than  when  he  thought  that 
he  seldom  repeated  himself.  In  reality  he  did 
little  but  repeat  his  fundamental  positions  with 
infinite  variations  in  expression. 

After  completing  his  chief  work,  Schopen- 
hauer wrote  some  verses  in  which  he  predicted 
that  posterity  would  erect  a  monument  to  him. 
This  prediction  was  fulfilled  in  1895 ;  but,  for  the 
time,  the  work  which  he  never  doubted  would 
be  his  enduring  title  to  fame  seemed,  like  Hume's 
Treatise,  to  have  fallen  '  dead  born  from  the  press.' 
This  he  attributed  to  the  hostility  of  the  academi- 
cal philosophers ;  and,  in  his  later  works,  attacks 
on  the  university  professors  form  a  characteristic 
7 


SCHOPENHAUER 

feature.  The  official  teachers  of  the  Hegelian 
school,  he  declared,  were  bent  only  on  obtaining 
positions  for  themselves  by  an  appearance  of 
supporting  Christian  dogma;  and  they  re- 
sented openness  on  the  part  of  any  one  else. 
Yet  on  one  side  he  maintained  that  his  own 
pessimism  was  more  truly  Christian  than  their 
optimism.  The  essential  spirit  of  Christianity  is 
that  of  Brahmanism  and  Buddhism,  the  great 
religions  that  sprang  from  India,  the  first  home 
of  our  race.  He  is  even  inclined  to  see  in  it 
traces  of  Indian  influence.  What  vitiates  it  in 
his  eyes  is  the  Jewish  element,  which  finds  its 
expression  in  the  flat  modern  '  Protestant-ration- 
alistic optimism.'  As  optimistic  religions,  he 
groups  together  Judaism,  Islam,  and  Grseco- 
Roman  Polytheism.  His  antipathy,  however, 
only  extends  to  the  two  former.  He  was  himself 
in  great  part  a  child  of  Humanism  and  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  rejoicing  over  the  approach- 
ing downfall  of  all  the  faiths,  and  holding  that 
a  weak  religion  (entirely  different  from  those  he 
admires)  is  favourable  to  civilisation.  Nothing 
can  exceed  his  scorn  for  nearly  everything  that 
characterised  the  Middle  Ages.  With  Catholi- 
cism as  a  political  system  he  has  no  sympathy 
whatever;  while  on  the  religious  side  the  Pro- 
8 


LIFE   AND   WRITINGS 

testant  are  as  sympathetic  to  him  as  the  Catholic 
mystics.  What  is  common  to  all  priesthoods, 
he  holds,  is  to  exploit  the  metaphysical  need  of 
mankind  (in  which  he  also  believes)  for  the  sake 
of  their  own  power.  Clericalism,  '  Pfaffenthum,' 
whether  Catholic  or  Protestant,  is  the  object  of 
his  unvarying  hatred  and  contempt.  If  he  had 
cared  to  appreciate  Hegel,  he  would  have  found 
on  this  point  much  community  of  spirit ;  but  of 
course  there  was  a  real  antithesis  between  the 
two  as  philosophers.  No  'conspiracy'  need  be 
invoked  to  explain  the  failure  of  Schopenhauer 
to  win  early  recognition.  Belief  in  the  State  and 
in  progress  was  quite  alien  to  him ;  and  Germany 
was  then  full  of  political  hopes,  which  found 
nourishment  in  optimistic  pantheism.  What  at 
length  gave  his  philosophy  vogue  was  the  collapse 
of  this  enthusiasm  on  the  failure  of  the  revolu- 
tionary movement  in  1848.  Once  known,  it 
contained  enough  of  permanent  value  to  secure 
it  from  again  passing  out  of  sight  with  the  next 
change  of  fashion. 

The  rest  of  Schopenhauer's  life  in  its  external 
relations  may  be  briefly  summed  up.  For  a  few 
years,  it  was  diversified  by  travels  in  Italy  and 
elsewhere,  and  by  an  unsuccessful  attempt  at 
academical  teaching  in  Berlin.  In  1831  he 
9 


SCHOPENHAUER 

moved  to  Frankfort,  where  he  finally  settled 
in  1833.  He  lived  unmarried  there  till  his  death 
on  the  21st  of  September  1860.  The  monument, 
already  spoken  of,  was  unveiled  at  Frankfort  on 
the  6th  of  June  1895. 

The  almost  unbroken  silence  with  which  his 
great  work  was  received,  though  it  had  a  dis- 
tempering effect  on  the  man,  did  not  discourage 
the  thinker.  The  whole  series  of  Schopenhauer's 
works,  indeed,  was  completed  before  he  attained 
anything  that  could  be  called  fame.  Constantly 
on  the  alert  as  he  was  to  seize  upon  confirmations 
of  his  system,  he  published  in  1836  his  short 
work  On  the  Will  in  Nature,  pointing  out  verifi- 
cations of  his  metaphysics  by  recent  science.  In 
1839  his  prize  essay,  On  the  Freedom  of  the  Human 
Will  (finished  in  1837),  was  crowned  by  the  Royal 
Scientific  Society  of  Drontheim  in  Norway.  This 
and  another  essay,  On  the  Basis  of  Morality,  not 
crowned  by  the  Royal  Danish  Society  of  Copen- 
hagen in  1840,  he  published  in  1841,  with  the 
inclusive  title,  Die  beiden  GwindproUeme  der 
Ethik.  In  1844  appeared  the  second  edition  of 
his  principal  work,  to  which  there  was  added, 
in  the  form  of  a  second  volume,  a  series  of 
elucidations  and  extensions  larger  in  bulk  than 
the  first.  This  new  volume  contains  much  of 
10 


LIFE   AND   WRITINGS 

his  best  and  most  effective  writing.  His  last 
work,  Parerga  und  Paralipomena,  which  ap- 
peared in  1851  (2  vols.),  is  from  the  literary  point 
of  view  the  most  brilliant.  It  was  only  from  this 
time  that  he  began  to  be  well  known  among  the 
general  public;  though  the  philosophic  'apos- 
tolate'  of  Julius  Frauenstadt,  who  afterwards 
edited  his  works,  had  begun  in  1840.  His  activity 
was  henceforth  confined  to  modifying  and  ex- 
tending his  works  for  new  editions;  an  employ- 
ment in  which  he  was  always  assiduous.  In 
consequence  of  this,  all  of  them,  as  they  stand, 
contain  references  from  one  to  another ;  but  the 
development  of  his  thinking,  so  far  as  there  was 
such  a  process  after  1818,  can  be  easily  traced 
without  reference  to  the  earlier  editions.  There 
is  some  growth ;  but,  as  has  been  said,  it  does  not 
affect  many  of  the  chief  points.  A  brief  exposi- 
tion of  his  philosophy  can  on  the  whole  take  it  as 
something  fixed.  The  heads  under  which  it  must 
fall  are  those  assigned  to  the  original  four  books 
of  Die  Welt  als  Wille  und  Vorstellung. 

Although  Schopenhauer  discountenanced  the 
attempt  to  connect  a  philosopher's  biography 
with  his  work,  something  has  to  be  said  about 
his  character,  since  this  has  been  dwelt  on  to  his 
disadvantage  by  opponents.  There  is  abundant 


SCHOPENHAUER 

material  for  a  personal  estimate  in  the  corre- 
spondence and  reminiscences  published  after  his 
death  by  his  disciples  Julius  Frauenstadt  and 
Wilhelm  Gwinner.  The  apparent  contradiction 
is  at  once  obvious  between  the  ascetic  consum- 
mation of  his  ethics  and  his  unascetic  life, 
carefully  occupied  in  its  latter  part  with  rules  for 
the  preservation  of  his  naturally  robust  health. 
He  was  quite  aware  of  this,  but  holds  it  absurd 
to  require  that  a  moralist  should  commend  only 
the  virtues  which  he  possesses.  It  is  as  if  the 
requirement  were  set  up  that  a  sculptor  is  to  be 
himself  a  model  of  beauty.  A  saint  need  not  be 
a  philosopher,  nor  a  philosopher  a  saint.  The 
science  of  morals  is  as  theoretical  as  any  other 
branch  of  philosophy.  Fundamentally  character 
is  unmodifiable,  though  knowledge,  it  is  allowed, 
may  change  the  mode  of  action  within  the  limits 
of  the  particular  character.  The  passage  to  the 
state  of  asceticism  cannot  be  effected  by  moral 
philosophy,  but  depends  on  a  kind  of  'grace.' 
After  all,  it  might  be  replied,  philosophers, 
whether  they  succeed  or  not,  do  usually  make 
at  least  an  attempt  to  live  in  accordance  with 
the  moral  ideal  they  set  up.  The  best  apology 
in  Schopenhauer's  case  is  that  the  fault  may 
have  been  as  much  in  his  ideal  as  in  his  failure 
12 


LIFE   AND   WRITINGS 

to  conform  to  it.  The  eloquent  pages  he  has 
devoted  to  the  subject  of  holiness  only  make 
manifest  the  inconsequence  (which  he  admits) 
in  the  passage  to  it.  For,  as  we  shall  see,  this 
has  nothing  in  common  with  the  essentially 
rational  asceticism  of  the  schools  of  later  antiquity ; 
which  was  a  rule  of  self-limitation  in  view  of  the 
philosophic  life.  He  did  in  a  way  of  his  own 
practise  something  of  this ;  and,  on  occasion,  he 
sets  forth  the  theory  of  it ;  but  he  quite  clearly 
sees  the  difference.  His  own  ideal,  which  he 
never  attempted  to  practise,  is  that  of  the  self- 
torturing  ascetics  of  the  Christian  Middle  Age. 
Within  the  range  of  properly  human  virtue,  he 
can  in  many  respects  hold  his  own,  not  only  as 
a  philosopher  but  as  a  man.  If  his  egoism  and 
vanity  are  undeniable,  he  undoubtedly  possessed 
the  virtues  of  rectitude  and  compassion.  What 
he  would  have  especially  laid  stress  on  was  the 
conscientious  devotion  to  his  work.  With  complete 
singleness  of  purpose  he  used  for  a  disinterested 
end  the  leisure  which  he  regarded  as  the  most  for- 
tunate of  endowments.  As  he  said  near  the  close 
of  his  life,  his  intellectual  conscience  was  clear. 

Of  Schopenhauer's  expositions  of  his  pessimism 
it  would  be  true  to  say,  as  Spinoza  says  of  the 
Book  of  Job,  that  the  matter,  like  the  style,  is  not 
13 


SCHOPENHAUER 

that  of  a  man  sitting  among  the  ashes,  but  of  one 
meditating  in  a  library.  This  of  course  does  not 
prove  that  they  are  not  a  genuine,  if  one-sided, 
rendering  of  human  experience.  All  that  can  be 
said  is  that  they  did  not  turn  him  away  from 
appreciation  of  the  apparent  goods  of  life.  His 
own  practical  principle  was  furnished  by  what  he 
regarded  as  a  lower  point  of  view ;  and  this  gives 
its  direction  to  the  semi-popular  philosophy  of 
the  Parerga.  j^From  what  he  takes  to  be  the 
higher  point  of  view,  the  belief  that  happiness  is 
attainable  by  man  on  earth  is  an  illusion;  but  he 
holds  that,  by  keeping  steadily  in  view  a  kind  of 
tempered  happiness  as  the  end,  many  mistakes 
may  be  avoided  in  the  conduct  of  life,  provided 
that  each  recognises  at  once  the  strength  and 
weakness  of  his  own  character,  and  does  not 
attempt  things  that,  with  the  given  limitations, 
are  impossible.)  Of  the  highest  truth,  as  he  con- 
ceived it,  he  could  therefore  make  no  use.  Only 
by  means  of  a  truth  that  he  was  bound  to  hold 
half-illusory  could  a  working  scheme  be  constructed 
for  himself  and  others.  This  result  may  give  us 
guidance  in  seeking  to  learn  what  we  can  from 
a  thinker  who  is  in  reality  no  representative  of  a 
decadence,  but  is  fundamentally  sane  and  rational, 
even  in  spite  of  himself, 


CHAPTER    II 

THEORY  OF   KNOWLEDGE 

THE  title  of  Schopenhauer's  chief  work  is  ren- 
dered in  the  English  translation,  The  World  aa 
Will  and  Idea.  Here  the  term  '  idea '  is  used  in 
the  sense  it  had  for  Locke  and  Berkeley ;  namely, 
any  object  of  mental  activity.  Thus  it  includes 
not  merely  imagery,  but  also  perception.  Since 
Hume  distinguished  '  ideas '  from  '  impressions,' 
it  has  tended  to  be  specialised  in  the  former 
sense.  The  German  word,  Vorstellung,  which  it 
is  used  to  render,  conveys  the  generalised  mean- 
ing of  the  Lockian  '  idea,'  now  frequently  expressed 
in  English  and  French  philosophical  works  by  the 
more  technical  term  '  presentation '  or  '  represen- 
tation.' By  Schopenhauer  himself  the  word 
'  Idea '  was  used  exclusively  in  the  sense  of  the 
Platonic  Idea,  which,  as  we  shall  see,  plays  an 
important  part  in  his  philosophy.  The  distinc- 
tion is  preserved  in  the  translation  by  the  use  of 
a  capital  when  Idea  has  the  latter  meaning ;  but 
15 


SCHOPENHAUER 

in  a  brief  exposition  it  seems  convenient  to  adopt 
a  more  technical  rendering  of  Vorstetlung ;  and, 
from  its  common  employment  in  psychological 
text-books,  I  have  selected  '  presentation '  as  the 
most  suitable. 

The  first  proposition  of  Schopenhauer's  philo- 
sophical system  is, '  The  world  is  my  presentation.' 
By  this  he  means  that  it  presents  itself  as  appear- 
ance to  the  knowing  subject.  This  appearance  is 
in  the  forms  of  time,  space  and  causality.  Under 
these  forms  every  phenomenon  necessarily 
appears,  because  they  are  a  priori  forms  of  the 
subject.  The  world  as  it  presents  itself  consists 
entirely  of  phenomena,  that  is,  appearances, 
related  according  to  these  forms.  The  most  fun- 
damental form  of  all  is  the  relation  between  object 
and  subject,  which  is  implied  in  all  of  them. 
Without  a  subject  there  can  be  no  presented 
object. 

Schopenhauer  is  therefore  an  idealist  in  the 
sense  in  which  we  call  Berkeley's  theory  of  the 
external  world  idealism ;  though  the  expressions 
used  are  to  some  extent  different.  The  difference 
proceeds  from  his  following  of  Kant.  His  Kan- 
tianism consists  in  the  recognition  of  a  priori 
forms  by  which  the  subject  constructs  for  itself  an 
'  objective '  world  of  appearances.  With  Berkeley 
16 


THEORY   OF   KNOWLEDGE 

he  agrees  as  against  Kant  in  not  admitting 
any  residue  whatever,  in  the  object  as  such,  that 
is  not  wholly  appearance.  But  while  he  allows 
that  Berkeley,  as  regards  the  general  formulation 
of  idealism,  was  more  consistent  than  Kant,  he 
finds  him,  in  working  out  the  principle,  altogether 
inadequate.  For  the  modern  mind  there  is  hence- 
forth no  way  in  philosophy  except  through  Kant, 
from  whom  dates  the  revolution  by  which  scho- 
lastic dualism  was  finally  overthrown.  Kant's 
systematic  construction,  however,  he  in  effect 
reduces  to  very  little.  His  is  a  much  simplified 
'  Apriorism.'  While  accepting  the  '  forms  of  sen- 
sible intuition/  that  is,  time  and  space,  just  as 
Kant  sets  them  forth,  he  clears  away  nearly  all 
the  superimposed  mechanism.  Kant's  '  Transcen- 
dental ./Esthetic,'  he  says,  was  a  real  discovery  in 
metaphysics ;  but  on  the  basis  of  this  he  for  the 
most  part  only  gave  free  play  to  his  architectonic 
impulse.  Of  the  twelve  '  categories  of  the  under- 
standing,' which  he  professed  to  derive  from  the 
logical  forms  of  judgment,  all  except  causality  are 
mere  'blind  windows.'  This  alone,  therefore, 
Schopenhauer  adopts ;  placing  it,  however,  not  at 
a  higher  level  but  side  by  side  with  time  and 
space,  Kant's  forms  of  intuition.  These  three 
forms,  according  to  Schopenhauer,  make  up  the 
B  17 


SCHOPENHAUER 

understanding  of  men  and  animals.  '  All  intuition 
is  intellectual.'  It  is  not  first  mere  appearance 
related  in  space  and  time,  and  waiting  for  under- 
standing to  organise  it;  but,  in  animals  as  in 
man,  it  is  put  in  order  at  once  under  the  three 
forms  that  suffice  to  explain  the  knowledge  all 
have  of  the  phenomenal  world. 

To  Reason  as  distinguished  from  Understanding, 
Schopenhauer  assigns  no  such  exalted  function  as 
was  attributed  to  it  in  portions  of  his  system  by 
Kant,  and  still  more  by  some  of  his  successors. 
The  name  of  'reason/  he  maintains,  ought  on 
etymological  grounds  to  be  restricted  to  the  faculty 
of  abstract  concepts.  This,  and  not  understand- 
ing, is  what  distinguishes  man  from  animals.  It 
discovers  and  invents  nothing,  but  it  puts  in  a 
generalised  and  available  form  what  the  under- 
standing has  discovered  in  intuition. 

For  the  historical  estimation  of  Schopenhauer, 
it  is  necessary  to  place  him  in  relation  to  Kant, 
as  he  himself  always  insisted.  Much  also  in  his 
chief  work  is  made  clearer  by  knowledge  of  his 
dissertation  On  the  Fourfold  Root  of  the  Principle 
of  Sufficient  Reason,  to  which  he  is  constantly 
referring.  Later,  his  manner  of  exposition  became 
more  independent ;  so  that  he  can  be  read  by  the 
general  reader  with  profit  simply  by  himself,  and 
18 


THEORY   OF   KNOWLEDGE 

without  reference  to  antecedents.  Still,  it  will 
always  be  advisable  for  an  expositor  to  follow  his 
directions,  at  least  to  the  extent  of  giving  some 
short  account  of  the  dissertation.  This  I  proceed 
to  give  approximately  in  the  place  to  which  he 
has  assigned  it  in  his  system. 

The  name  of  the  principle  (principiwn  rationis 
sufficientis)  he  took  over  from  Leibniz  and  his 
successor  Wolff,  but  gave  it  a  new  amplitude. 
With  him,  it  stands  as  an  inclusive  term  for  four 
modes  of  connection  by  which  the  thoroughgoing 
relativity  of  phenomena  to  one  another  is  con- 
stituted for  our  intelligence.  The  general  state- 
ment adopted  is,  'Nothing  is  without  a  reason 
why  it  should  be  rather  than  not  be.'  Its  four 
forms  are  the  principles  of  becoming  (fiendi),  of 
knowing  (cognoscendi),  of  being  (essendi),  and 
of  acting  (agendi).  (1)  Under  the  first  head 
come  'causes.'  These  are  divided  into  'cause 
proper,'  for  inorganic  things;  'stimulus,'  for  the 
vegetative  life  both  of  plants  and  animals;  and 
'  motive,'  for  animals  and  men.  The  law  of  causa- 
tion is  applicable  only  to  changes;  not  to  the 
forces  of  nature,  to  matter,  or  to  the  world  as  a 
whole,  which  are  perdurable.  Cause  precedes 
effect  in  time.  Not  one  thing,  but  one  state  of  a 
thing,  is  the  cause  of  another.  From  the  law  of 
19 


SCHOPENHAUER 

causation  there  results  an  infinite  series  a  parte 
ante  as  well  as  a  parte  post.  (2)  The  principle  of 
sufficient  reason  of  knowing  is  applicable  to  con- 
cepts, which  are  all  derived  from  intuition,  that 
is,  from  percepts.  The  laws  of  logic,  which  come 
under  this  head,  can  yield  nothing  original,  but 
can  only  render  explicit  what  was  in  the  under- 
standing. (3)  Under  the  third  head  come  arith- 
metical and  geometrical  relations.  These  are 
peculiar  relations  of  presentations,  distinct  from 
all  others,  and  only  intelligible  in  virtue  of  a  pure 
a  priori  intuition.  For  geometry  this  is  space ; 
for  arithmetic  time,  in  which  counting  goes  on. 
Scientifically,  arithmetic  is  fundamental.  (4)  As 
the  third  form  of  causality  was  enumerated 
'  motive '  for  the  will ;  but  in  that  classification  it 
was  viewed  from  without,  as  belonging  to  the 
world  of  objects.  Through  the  direct  knowledge 
we  have  of  our  own  will,  we  know  also  from 
within  this  determination  by  the  presentation  we 
call  a  motive.  Hence  emerges  the  fourth  form  of 
the  principle  of  sufficient  reason.  This  at  a  later 
stage  makes  possible  the  transition  from  physics 
to  metaphysics. 

All  these  forms  alike  are  forms  of  necessary 
determination.    Necessity  has  no  clear  and  true 
but  certainty  of  the  consequence  when  the 
20 


THEORY   OF   KNOWLEDGE 

ground  is  posited.  All  necessity  therefore  is  con- 
ditional. In  accordance  with  the  four  expressions 
of  the  principle  of  sufficient  reason,  it  takes  the 
fourfold  shape  of  physical,  logical,  mathematical, 
and  moral  necessity. 

The  sharp  distinction  between  logical  and 
mathematical  truth,  with  the  assignment  of  the 
former  to  conceptual  and  of  the  latter  to  intuitive 
relations,  comes  to  Schopenhauer  directly  from 
Kant.  So  also  does  his  view  that  the  necessary 
form  of  causation  is  sequence;  though  here  his 
points  of  contact  with  English  thinkers,  earlier 
and  later,  are  very  marked.  Only  in  his  state- 
ment of  the  '  law  of  motivation '  as  '  causality  seen 
from  within '  does  he  hint  at  his  own  distinctive 
metaphysical  doctrine.  Meanwhile,  it  is  evident 
that  he  is  to  be  numbered  with  the  group  of 
modern  thinkers  who  have  arrived  in  one  way  or 
another  at  a  complete  scientific  phenomenism. 
Expositors  have  noted  that  in  his  earlier  state- 
ments of  this  he  tends  to  lay  more  stress  on  the 
character  of  the  visible  and  tangible  world  as 
mere  appearance.  The  impermanence,  the 
relativity,  of  all  that  exists  in  time  and  space, 
leads  him  to  describe  it,  in  a  favourite  term 
borrowed  from  Indian  philosophy,  as  Maya,  or 
illusion.  Later,  he  dwells  more  on  the  relative 
21 


SCHOPENHAUER 

reality  of  things  as  they  appear.  His  position, 
however,  does  not  essentially  alter,  but  only  finds 
varying  expression  as  he  turns  more  to  the 
scientific  or  to  the  metaphysical  side.  From 
Hume's  view  on  causation  he  differs  not  by 
opposing  its  pure  phenomenism,  but  only  by 
recognising,  as  Kant  does,  an  a  priori  element  in 
the  form  of  its  law.  German  critics  have  seen  in 
his  own  formulation  an  anticipation  of  Mill,  and 
this  is  certainly  striking  as  regards  the  general 
conception  of  the  causal  order,  although  there  is 
no  anticipation  of  Mill's  inductive  logic.  On  the 
same  side  there  is  a  close  agreement  with  Male- 
branche  and  the  Occasionalists,  pointed  out  by 
Schopenhauer  himself.  The  causal  explanations 
of  science,  he  is  at  one  with  them  in  insisting, 
give  no  ultimate  account  of  anything.  All  its 
causes  are  no  more  than  '  occasional  causes,' — 
merely  instances,  as  Mi!!  expressed  it  afterwards, 
of '  invariable  and  unconditional  sequence.'  From 
Mill  of  course  he  differs  in  holding  its  form  to  be 
necessary  and  a  priori,  not  ultimately  derived 
from  a  summation  of  experiences;  and,  with  the 
Occasionalists,  he  goes  on  to  metaphysics  in  its 
sense  of  ontology,  as  Mill  never  did.  The  differ- 
ence here  is  that  he  does  not  clothe  his  meta- 
physics in  a  theological  dress. 
22 


THEORY    OF    KNOWLEDGE 

In  the  later  development  of  his  thought, 
Schopenhauer  dealt  more  expressly  with  the 
question,  how  this  kind  of  phenomenism  is 
reconcilable  with  a  scientific  cosmogony.  On  one 
side  the  proposition, '  No  object  without  subject,' 
makes  materialism  for  ever  impossible;  for  the 
materialist  tries  to  explain  from  relations  among 
presentations  what  is  the  condition  of  all  pre- 
sentation. On  the  other  side,  we  are  all  compelled 
to  agree  with  the  materialists  that  knowledge  of 
the  object  comes  late  in  a  long  series  of  material 
events.  Inorganic  things  existed  in  time  before 
life;  vegetative  life  before  animal  life;  and  only 
with  animal  life  does  knowledge  emerge. 
Reasoned  knowledge  of  the  whole  series  comes 
only  at  the  end  of  it  in  the  human  mind.  This 
apparent  contradiction  he  solves  by  leaving  a 
place  for  metaphysics.  Our  representation  of  the 
world  as  it  existed  before  the  appearance  of  life 
was  indeed  non-existent  at  the  time  to  which  we 
assign  it;  but  the  real  being  of  the  world  had 
a  manifestation  not  imaginable  by  us.  For  this, 
we  substitute  a  picture  of  a  world  such  as  we 
should  have  been  aware  of  had  our  '  subject,'  with 
its  a  priori  forms  of  time,  space,  and  causality, 
been  then  present.  What  the  reality  is,  is  the 
problem  of  the  thing-in-itself  (to  use  the  Kantian 
23 


SCHOPENHAUER 

term).  This  problem  remains  over ;  but  we  know 
that  the  metaphysical  reality  cannot  be  matter; 
for  matter,  with  all  its  qualities,  is  phenomenal. 
It  exists  only  '  for  understanding,  through  under- 
standing, in  understanding.'  These  discrimina- 
tions made,  Schopenhauer  offers  us  a  scientific 
cosmogony  beginning  with  the  nebular  hypothesis 
and  ending  with  an  outline  of  organic  evolution. 
This  last  differs  from  the  Darwinian  theory  in 
supposing  a  production  of  species  by  definite  steps 
instead  of  by  accumulation  of  small  individual 
variations.  At  a  certain  time,  a  form  that  has  all 
the  characters  of  a  new  species  appears  among 
the  progeny  of  an  existing  species.  Man  is  the 
last  and  highest  form  to  be  evolved.  From 
Schopenhauer's  metaphysics,  as  we  shall  see,  it 
follows  that  no  higher  form  of  life  will  ever 
appear. 

A  word  may  be  said  here  on  a  materialistic- 
sounding  phrase  which  is  very  prominent  in 
Schopenhauer's  later  expositions,  and  has  been 
remarked  on  as  paradoxical  for  an  idealist.  The 
world  as  presentation,  he  often  says,  is  'in  the 
brain.'  This,  it  must  be  allowed,  is  not  fully 
defensible  from  his  own  point  of  view,  except 
with  the  aid  of  a  later  distinction.  The  brain  as 
we  know  it  is  of  course  only  a  part  of  the 
24 


THEORY   OF   KNOWLEDGE 

phenomenon  of  the  subject, — a  grouping  of 
possible  perceptions.  How  then,  since  it  is  itself 
only  appearance,  can  it  be  the  bearer  of  the  whole 
universe  as  appearance  ?  The  answer  is  that 
Schopenhauer  meant  in  reality  '  the  being  of  the 
brain/  and  not  the  brain  as  phenomenon.  He 
had  a  growing  sense  of  the  importance  of 
physiology  for  the  investigation  of  mind;  and 
his  predilection  led  him  to  adopt  a  not  quite 
satisfactory  shorthand  expression  for  the  corre- 
spondence we  know  scientifically  to  exist  between 
our  mental  processes  and  changes  capable  of 
objective  investigation  in  the  matter  of  the 
brain. 

In  science  his  distinctive  bent  was  to  the 
borderland  between  psychology  and  physiology. 
Hence  came  the  attraction  exercised  on  him  by 
Goethe's  theory  of  colours.  To  his  own  theory, 
though,  unlike  his  philosophical  system,  it  has 
always  failed  to  gain  the  attention  he  predicted 
for  it,  the  merit  must  be  allowed  of  treating  the 
problem  as  essentially  one  of  psychophysics. 
What  he  does  is  to  attempt  to  ascertain  the 
conditions  in  the  sensibility  of  the  retina  that 
account  for  our  actual  colour-sensations.  This 
problem  was  untouched  by  the  Newtonian 
theory;  but  Schopenhauer  followed  Goethe  in 
25 


SCHOPENHAUER 

the  error  of  trying  to  overthrow  this  on  its  own 
ground.  He  had  no  aptitude  for  the  special 
inquiries  of  mathematics  and  physics,  though  he 
had  gained  a  clear  insight  into  their  general 
nature  as  sciences.  On  the  psycho-physical  side 
there  is  to-day  no  fully  authorised  theory.  The 
problem  indeed  has  become  ever  more  complex. 
Schopenhauer's  attempt,  by  combination  of  sensi- 
bilities to  '  light '  and  '  darkness,'  to  explain  the 
phenomena  of  complementary  colours,  deserves 
at  least  a  record  in  the  long  series  of  essays  of 
which  the  best  known  are  the  '  Young- Helmholtz 
theory'  and  that  of  Hering.  It  marks  an  in- 
dubitable advance  on  Goethe  in  the  clear  distinc- 
tion drawn  between  the  mixture,  in  the  ordinary 
sense,  that  can  only  result  in  dilution  to  different 
shades  of  grey,  and  the  kinds  of  mixture  from 
which,  in  their  view,  true  colours  arise. 

A  characteristic  position  in  Schopenhauer's 
theory  of  knowledge,  and  one  that  is  constantly 
finding  new  expression  in  his  writings,  is  the 
distinction  between  abstract  and  intuitive  know- 
ledge already  touched  on.  Intuitive  knowledge 
of  the  kind  that  is  common  to  men  and  animals, 
as  we  have  seen,  makes  up,  in  his  terminology, 
the  'understanding';  while  'reason'  is  the  dis- 
tinctively human  faculty  of  concepts.  When  he 
26 


THEORY   OF   KNOWLEDGE 

depreciates  this,  as  he  often  does,  in  comparison 
with  '  intuition,'  it  must  be  remembered  that  he 
does  not  limit  this  term  to  perception  of  par- 
ticulars, but  ascribes  to  what  he  calls  the 
'  Platonic  Idea '  a  certain  kind  of  union  between 
reason  and  '  phantasy/  which  gives  it  an  intuitive 
character  of  its  own.  Thus  intuition  can  stand, 
though  not  in  every  case  for  what  is  higher,  yet 
always  for  that  which  is  wider  and  greater  and 
more  immediate.  Whatever  may  be  done  with 
reflective  reason  and  its  abstractions,  every 
effectual  process  of  thought  must  end,  alike  for 
knowledge  and  art  and  virtue,  in  some  intuitive 
presentation.  <fhe  importance  of  reason  for 
practice  is  due  to  its  generality.  Its  function  is 
subordinate.  It  does  not  furnish  the  ground  of 
virtuous  action  any  more  than  aesthetic  precepts 
can  enable  any  one  to  produce  a  work  of  art ; 
but  it  can  help  to  preserve  constancy  to  certain 
maxims,  as  also  in  art  a  reasoned  plan  is  necessary 
because  the  inspiration  of  genius  is  not  every 
moment  at  command.  Virtue  and  artistic  genius 
alike,  however,  depend  ultimately  on  intuition: 
and  so  also  does  every  true  discovery  in  science. 
The  nature  of  pedantry  is  to  try  to  be  guided 
everywhere  by  concepts,  and  to  trust  nothing  to 
perception  in  the  particular  case.  Philosophy 
27 


SCHOPENHAUER 

also  Schopenhauer  regards  as  depending  ulti- 
mately on  a  certain  intuitive  view ;  but  he  allows 
that  it  has  to  translate  this  into  abstractions. 
Its  problem  is  to  express  the  what  of  the  world 
in  abstract  form :  science  dealing  only  with  the 
why  of  phenomena  related  within  the  world. 
This  character  of  philosophy  as  a  system  of 
abstract  concepts  deprives  it  of  the  immediate 
attractiveness  of  art ;  so  that,  as  he  says  in  one 
place,  it  is  more  fortunate  to  be  a  poet  than  a 
philosopher. 


CHAPTER   III 

METAPHYSICS   OF   THE   WILL 

WE  have  seen  that  scientific  explanation  does 
not  go  beyond  presentations  ordered  in  space  and 
time.  This  is  just  as  true  of  the  sciences  of 
causation — the  '  setiological '  sciences — as  it  is  of 
mathematical  science.  All  that  we  learn  from 
Mechanics,  Physics,  Chemistry  and  Physiology, 
is  'how,  in  accordance  with  an  infallible  rule, 
one  determinate  state  of  matter  necessarily 
follows  another:  how  a  determinate  change 
necessarily  conditions  and  brings  on  another 
determinate  change.'  This  knowledge  does  not 
satisfy  us.  We  wish  to  learn  the  significance  of 
phenomena ;  but  we  find  that  from  outside,  while 
we  view  them  as  presentations,  their  inner  mean- 
ing is  for  ever  inaccessible. 

The  starting-point  for  the  metaphysical  know- 
ledge we  seek  is  given  us  in  our  own  body.    The 
animal  body  is  'the  immediate  object  of  the 
subject ' :   in  it  as  presentation    the  '  effects '  of 
29 


SCHjOPENHAUER 

'  causes '  in  the  order  of  presentations  external 
to  it  are  first  recognised.  Now  in  virtue  of  his 
body  the  investigator  is  not  pure  knowing 
subject  standing  apart  from  that  which  he  knows. 
In  the  case  of  the  particular  system  of  presenta- 
tions constituting  his  organism,  he  knows  what 
these  presentations  signify,  and  that  is  his  will 
in  a  certain  modification.  The  subject  appears 
as  individual  through  its  identity  with  the 
body,  and  this  body  is  given  to  it  in  two  different 
ways :  on  one  side  as  object  among  objects,  and 
subjected  to  their  laws ;  on  the  other  side  as  the 
will  immediately  known  to  each.  The  act  01 
will  and  the  movement  of  the  body  are  not  two 
different  states  related  as  cause  and  effect;  for 
the  relation  of  cause  and  effect  belongs  only  to 
the  object,  the  phenomenon,  the  presentation. 
They  are  one  and  the  same  act  given  in  different 
manners:  the  will,  immediately  to  the  subject; 
the  movement,  in  sensible  intuition  for  under- 
standing. The  action  of  the  body  is  the  ob- 
jectified act  of  will.  Called  at  first  the  im- 
mediate object  of  presentation,  the  body  may 
now,  from  the  other  side,  be  called  'the  objectivity 
of  the  will.' 

Thus,  as  was  said,  the   '  law  of  motivation ' 
discloses    the    inner    nature    of    causality.      In 
30 


METAPHYSICS   OF   THE   WILL 

causality  in  general  we  know  only  relations  of 
phenomena;  but  in  the  case  of  our  own  body  we 
know  something  else  that  those  relations  express  ; 
namely,  the  act  of  will  determined  by  motives. 
Now  there  are  in  the  world  as  presentation  other 
systems  like  that  which  we  call  our  body.  Unless 
all  these  are  to  be  supposed  mere  phantoms  with- 
out inner  reality,  we  must  infer  by  analogy,  in 
correspondence  with  like  phenomena,  other  indi- 
vidual wills  similar  to  that  which  we  know  in  our- 
selves. This  inference  from  analogy,  universally 
admitted  in  the  case  of  human  and  animal  bodies, 
must  be  extended  to  the  whole  corporeal  world. 
The  failure  to  take  this  step  is  where  the  purely 
intellectual  forms  of  idealism  have  come  short. 
Kant's  '  thing-in-itself,'  which  is  not  subject  to 
the  forms  by  which  presentations  become  experi- 
ence, but  which  experience  and  its  forms  indicate 
as  the  reality,  has  been  wrongly  condemned  by 
his  successors  as  alien  to  idealism.  It  is  true 
that  Kant  did  in  some  respects  fail  to  maintain 
the  idealistic  position  with  the  clearness  of 
Berkeley ;  but  his  shortcoming  was  not  in  affirm- 
ing a  thing-in-itself  beyond  phenomena.  Here, 
in  Schopenhauer's  view,  is  the  metaphysical 
problem  that  he  left  a  place  for  but  did  not  solve. 
The  word  of  the  riddle  has  now  been  pronounced. 


SCHOPENHAUER 

Beyond  presentation,  that  is,  in  itself  and  accord- 
ing to  its  innermost  essence,  the  world  is  that 
which  we  find  in  ourselves  immediately  as  will. 
By  this  it  is  not  meant  that  a  falling  stone,  for 
example,  acts  from  a  motive  ;  knowledge  and  the 
consequent  action  from  motives  belongs  only  to 
the  determinate  form  that  the  will  has  in  animals 
and  men ;  but  the  reality  in  the  stone  also  is  the 
same  in  essence  as  that  to  which  we  apply  the 
name  of  will  in  ourselves.  He  who  possesses  this 
key  to  the  knowledge  of  nature's  innermost 
being  will  interpret  the  forces  of  vegetation,  of 
crystallisation,  of  magnetism,  of  chemical  affinity, 
even  of  weight  itself,  as  different  only  in  pheno- 
menal manifestation  but  in  essence  the  same ; 
namely,  that  which  is  better  known  to  each  than 
all  else,  and  where  it  emerges  most  clearly  is 
called  will.  Only  the  will  is  thing-in-itself.  It  is 
wholly  different  from  presentation,  and  is  that  of 
which  presentation  is  the  phenomenon,  the  visi- 
bility, the  objectivity.  Differences  affect  only  the 
degree  of  the  appearing,  not  the  essence  of  that 
which  appears. 

While  the  reality  everywhere  present  is  not 

will    as    specifically  known  in   man,  the  mode 

of  indicating   its   essence   by  reference  to  this, 

Schopenhauer  contends,  is  a  gain  in  insight.    The 

32 


METAPHYSICS   OF   THE   WILL 

thing-in-itself  ought  to  receive  its  name  from 
that  among  all  its  manifestations  which  is  the 
clearest,  the  most  perfect,  the  most  immediately 
illumined  by  knowledge ;  and  this  is  man's  will. 
When  we  say  that  every  force  in  nature  is  to  be 
thought  of  as  Will,  we  are  subsuming  an  unknown 
under  a  known.  For  the  conception  of  Force  is 
abstracted  from  the  realm  of  cause  and  effect, 
and  indicates  the  limit  of  scientific  explanation. 
Having  arrived  at  the  forces  of  nature  on  the  one 
side  and  the  forms  of  the  subject  on  the  other, 
science  can  go  no  further.  The  conception  of 
Will  can  make  known  that  which  was  so  far  con- 
cealed, because  it  proceeds  from  the  most  intimate 
consciousness  that  each  has  of  himself,  where  the 
knower  and  the  known  coincide. 

By  this  consciousness,  in  which  subject  and 
object  are  not  yet  set  apart,  we  reach  something 
universal.  In  itself  the  Will  is  not  individualised, 
but  exists  whole  and  undivided  in  every  single 
thing  in  nature,  as  the  Subject  of  contemplation 
exists  whole  and  undivided  in  each  cognitive 
being.  It  is  entirely  free  from  all  forms  of  the 
phenomenon.  What  makes  plurality  possible  is 
subjection  to  the  forms  of  time  and  space,  by 
which  only  the  phenomenon  is  affected.  Time 
and  space  may  therefore  be  called,  in  scholastic 
C  33 


SCHOPENHAUER 

terminology,  the  '  principle  of  individuation.' 
While  each  of  its  phenomena  is  subject  to  the 
law  of  sufficient  reason,  which  is  the  law  of 
appearance  in  these  forms,  there  is  for  the  Will  as 
thing-in-itself  no  rational  ground :  it  is '  grundlos.' 
It  is  free  from  all  plurality,  although  its  pheno- 
mena in  space  and  time  are  innumerable.  It"  is 
one,  not  with  the  unity  of  an  object  or  of  a  con- 
cept, but  as  that  which  lies  outside  of  space  and 
time,  beyond  the  principium  individuationis, 
that  is,  the  possibility  of  plurality.  The  indi- 
vidual, the  person,  is  not  will  as  thing-in-itself, 
but  phenomenon  of  the  will,  and  as  such  deter- 
mined. The  will  is  '  free '  because  there  is 
nothing  beyond  itself  to  determine  it.  Further, 
it  is  in  itself  mere  activity  without  end,  a  blind 
striving.  Knowledge  appears  only  as  the  accom- 
paniment of  its  ascending  stages. 

Here  we  have  arrived  at  the  thought  which,  in 
its  various  expressions,  constitutes  Schopen- 
hauer's metaphysics.  That  this  cannot  be  scien- 
tifically deduced  he  admits ;  but  he  regards  it  as 
furnishing  such  explanation  as  is  possible  of 
science  itself.  For  science  there  is  in  everything 
an  inexplicable  element  to  which  it  runs  back, 
and  which  is  real,  not  merely  phenomenal.  From 
this  reality  we  are  most  remote  in  pure  mathe- 
34 


METAPHYSICS   OF  THE   WILL 

matics  and  in  the  pure  a  priori  science  of  nature 
as  it  was  formulated  by  Kant.  These  owe  their 
transparent  clearness  precisely  to  their  absence  of 
real  content,  or  to  the  slightness  of  this.  The 
attempt  to  reduce  organic  life  to  chemistry,  this 
again  to  mechanism,  and  at  last  everything  to 
arithmetic,  could  it  succeed,  would  leave  mere 
form  behind,  from  which  all  the  content  of  pheno- 
mena would  have  vanished.  And  the  form  would 
in  the  end  be  form  of  the  subject.  But  the  enter- 
prise is  vain.  '  For  in  everything  in  nature  there 
is  something  of  which  no  ground  can  ever  be 
given,  of  which  no  explanation  is  possible,  no 
cause  further  is  to  be  sought.'  What  for  man  is 
his  inexplicable  character,  presupposed  in  every 
explanation  of  his  deeds  from  motives,  that  for 
every  inorganic  body  is  its  inexplicable  quality, 
the  manner  of  its  acting. 

The  basis  of  this  too  is  will,  and  '  groundless,' 
inexplicable  will;  but  evidently  the  conception 
here  is  not  identical  with  that  of  the  Will  that  is 
one  and  all.  How  do  we  pass  from  the  universal 
to  that  which  has  a  particular  character  or 
quality  ?  For  of  the  Will  as  thing-in-itself  we  are 
told  that  there  is  not  a  greater  portion  in  a  man 
and  a  less  in  a  stone.  The  relation  of  part  and 
whole  belongs  exclusively  to  space.  The  more 
35 


SCHOPENHAUER 

and  less  touches  only  the  phenomenon,  that  is, 
the  visibility,  the  objectivation.  A  higher  degree 
of  this  is  in  the  plant  than  in  the  stone,  in  the 
animal  than  in  the  plant,  and  so  forth ;  but  the 
Will  that  is  the  essence  of  all  is  untouched  by 
degree,  as  it  is  beyond  plurality,  space  and  time, 
and  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect. 

The  answer  to  the  question  here  raised  is  given 
in  Schopenhauer's  interpretation  of  the  Platonic 
Ideas.  These  he  regards  as  stages  of  objectiva- 
tion of  the  Will.  They  are,  as  Plato  called  them, 
eternal  forms  related  to  particular  things  as 
models.  The  lowest  stage  of  objectivation  of  the 
Will  is  represented  by  the  forces  of  inorganic 
nature.  Some  of  these,  such  as  weight  and  im- 
penetrability, appear  in  all  matter.  Some  are 
divided  among  its  different  kinds,  as  rigidity, 
fluidity,  elasticity,  electricity,  magnetism,  chemi- 
cal properties.  They  are  not  subject  to  the 
relation  of  cause  and  effect,  but  are  presupposed 
by  it.  A  force  is  neither  cause  of  an  effect  nor 
effect  of  a  cause.  Philosophically,  it  is  immedi- 
ate objectivity  of  the  will ;  in  aetiology,  qualitas 
occnlta.  At  the  lowest  stages  of  objectivation, 
there  is  no  individuality.  This  does  not  appear 
in  inorganic  things,  nor  even  in  merely  organic 
or  vegetative  life,  but  only  as  we  ascend  the  scale 
36 


METAPHYSICS   OF   THE   WILL 

of  animals.  Even  in  the  higher  animals  the 
specific  enormously  predominates  over  the  indi- 
vidual character.  Only  in  man  is  the  Idea 
objectified  in  the  individual  character  as  such. 
'  The  character  of  each  individual  man,  so  far  as 
it  is  thoroughly  individual  and  not  entirely  com- 
prehended in  that  of  the  species,  may  be  regarded 
as  a  particular  Idea,  corresponding  to  a  peculiar 
act  of  objectivation  of  the  Will.' 

Schopenhauer  warns  us  against  substituting 
this  philosophical  explanation  for  scientific  aetio- 
logy. The  chain  of  causes  and  effects,  he  points 
out,  is  not  broken  by  the  differences  of  the 
original,  irreducible  forces.  The  aetiology  and 
the  philosophy  of  nature  go  side  by  side,  regard- 
ing the  same  object  from  different  points  of  view. 
Yet  he  also  gives  us  in  relation  to  his  philosophy 
much  that  is  not  unsuggestive  scientifically. 
His  doctrine  is  not  properly  evolutionary,  since 
the  Ideas  are  eternal ;  but  he  has  guarded  inci- 
dentally against  our  supposing  that  all  the 
natural  kinds  that  manifest  the  Ideas  phenome- 
nally must  be  always  represented  in  every  world. 
For  our  particular  world,  comprising  the  sun  and 
planets  of  the  solar  system,  he  sets  forth  in  the 
Parerga  an  account  of  the  process  by  which  it 
develops  from  the  nebula  to  man.  This  was 
37 


SCHOPENHAUER 

referred  to  in  the  preceding  chapter.  In  his 
fundamental  work  he  describes  a  struggle, 
present  through  the  whole  of  nature,  in  which 
the  phenomenal  manifestations  of  the  higher 
Ideas  conquer  and  subjugate  those  of  the  lower, 
though  they  leave  them  still  existent  and  ever 
striving  to  get  loose.  Here  has  been  seen  an 
adumbration  of  natural  selection:  he  himself 
admits  the  difficulty  he  has  in  making  it  clear. 
We  must  remember  that  it  is  pre-Darwinian. 

Knowledge  or  intelligence  he  seeks  to  explain 
as  an  aid  to  the  individual  organism  in  its 
struggle  to  subsist  and  to  propagate  its  kind.  It 
lirst  appears  in  animal  life.  It  is  represented  by 
the  brain  or  a  large  ganglion,  as  every  endeavour 
of  the  Will  in  its  self-objectivation  is  represented 
by  some  organ ;  that  is,  displays  itself  for  pre- 
sentation as  such  and  such  an  appearance. 
Superinduced  along  with  this  contrivance  for 
aid  in  the  struggle,  the  world  as  presentation, 
with  all  its  forms,  subject  and  object,  time,  space, 
plurality  and  causality,  is  all  at  once  there. 
'Hitherto  only  will,  it  is  now  at  the  same  time 
presentation,  object  of  the  knowing  subject.' 
Then  in  man,  as  a  higher  power  beyond  merely 
intuitive  intelligence,  appears  reason  as  the  power 
of  abstract  conception.  For  the  most  part, 
38 


METAPHYSICS   OF   THE   WILL 

rational  as  well  as  intuitive  knowledge,  evolved 
originally  as  a  mere  means  to  higher  objectiva- 
tion  of  the  Will,  remains  wholly  in  its  service. 
How,  in  exceptional  cases,  intellect  emancipates 
itself,  will  be  discussed  under  the  heads  of 
^Esthetics  and  Ethics. 

That  this  view  implies  a  teleology  Schopen- 
hauer expressly  recognises.  Indeed  he  is  a  very 
decided  teleologist  on  lines  of  his  own,  and,  in 
physiology,  takes  sides  strongly  with  'vitalism' 
as  against  pure  mechanicism.  True,  the  Will  is 
'  endless '  blind  striving,  and  is  essentially  divided 
against  itself.  Everywhere  in  nature  there  is 
strife,  and  this  takes  the  most  horrible  forms. 
Yet  somehow  there  is  in  each  individual  mani- 
festation of  will  a  principle  by  which  first  the 
organism  with  its  vital  processes,  and  then  the 
portion  of  it  called  the  brain,  in  which  is  repre- 
sented the  intellect  with  its  a  priori  forms,  are 
evolved  as  aids  in  the  strife.  And,  adapting  all 
the  manifestations  to  one  another,  there  is  a 
teleology  of  the  universe.  The  whole  world,  with 
all  its  phenomena,  is  the  objectivity  of  the  one 
and  indivisible  Will;  the  Idea  which  is  related 
to  all  other  Ideas  as  the  harmony  to  the  single 
voices.  The  unity  of  the  Will  shows  itself  in  the 
unison  of  all  its  phenomena  as  related  to  one 
39 


SCHOPENHAUER 

another.  Man,  its  clearest  and  completest  objec- 
tivation,  is  the  summit  of  a  pyramid,  and  could 
not  exist  without  this.  Inorganic  and  organic 
nature,  then,  were  adapted  to  the  future  appear- 
ance of  man,  as  man  is  adapted  to  the  develop- 
ment that  preceded  him.  But  in  thinking  the 
reality,  time  is  to  be  abstracted  from.  The 
earlier,  we  are  obliged  to  say,  is  fitted  to  the 
later,  as  the  later  is  fitted  to  the  earlier ;  but  the 
relation  of  means  to  end,  under  which  we  cannot 
help  figuring  the  adaptation,  is  only  appearance 
for  our  manner  of  knowledge.  And  the  harmony 
described  does  not  get  rid  of  the  conflict  inherent 
in  all  will. 

In  this  account  of  Schopenhauer's  metaphysical 
doctrine,  I  have  tried  to  make  the  exposition  as 
smooth  as  possible ;  but  at  two  points  the  discon- 
tinuity can  scarcely  be  concealed.  First,  the 
relation  of  the  universal  Will  to  the  individual 
will  is  not  made  clear ;  and,  secondly,  the  emer- 
gence of  the  world  of  presentation,  with  the 
knowledge  in  which  it  culminates,  is  left  unin- 
telligible because  the  will  is  conceived  as  mere 
blind  striving  without  an  aim.  As  regards  the 
first  point,  disciples  and  expositors  have  been  able 
to  show  that,  by  means  of  distinctions  in  his  later 
writings,  apparent  contradictions  are  to  some 
40 


METAPHYSICS   OF   THE   WILL 

extent  cleared  away;  and,  moreover,  that  he 
came  to  recognise  more  reality  in  the  individual 
will.  On  the  second  point,  I  think  it  will  be 
necessary  to  admit  that  his  system  as  such  breaks 
down.  But  both  points  must  be  considered  in 
their  connection. 

One  of  the  most  noteworthy  features  of 
Schopenhauer's  philosophy  is,  as  he  himself 
thought,  the  acceptance  from  first  to  last  of  Kant's 
distinction  between  the  '  empirical '  and  the  '  in- 
telligible' character  of  the  individual,  Every  act 
of  will  of  every  human  being  follows  with  neces- 
sity as  phenomenon  from  its  phenomenal  causes ; 
so  that  all  the  events  of  each  person's  life  are 
determined  in  accordance  with  scientific  law. 
Nevertheless,  the  character  empirically  manifested 
in  the  phenomenal  world,  while  it  is  completely 
necessitated,  is  the  expression  of  something  that 
is  free  from  necessitation.  This  'intelligible 
character '  is  out  of  time,  and,  itself  undetermined, 
manifests  itself  through  that  which  develops  in 
time  as  a  chain  of  necessary  causes  and  effects. 
That  this  doctrine  had  been  taken  up,  without 
any  ambiguity  as  regards  the  determinism,  by 
Schelling  as  well  as  by  himself,  he  expressly 
acknowledges;  and  he  finds  it,  as  he  also  finds 
modern  idealism,  anticipated  in  various  passages 


SCHOPENHAUER 

by  the  Neo-Platonists.  His  adaptation  of  it  to 
his  doctrine  of  the  Ideas  is  distinctly  Neo-Platonic 
in  so  far  as  he  recognises  '  Ideas  of  individuals ' ; 
but  of  course  to  make  Will  the  essence  belongs  to 
his  own  system.  'The  intelligible  character,'  he 
says, '  coincides  with  the  Idea,  or,  yet  more  pre- 
cisely, with  the  original  act  of  will  that  manifests 
itself  in  it:  in  so  far,  not  only  is  the  empirical 
character  of  each  man,  but  also  of  each  animal 
species,  nay,  of  each  plant  species,  and  even  of 
each  original  force  of  inorganic  nature,  to  be  re- 
garded as  phenomenon  of  an  intelligible  character, 
that  is,  of  an  indivisible  act  of  will  out  of  time.' 
This  is  what  he  called  the  '  aseitas '  of  the  will ; 
borrowing  a  scholastic  term  to  indicate  its  de- 
rivation (if  we  may  speak  of  it  as  derived)  from 
itself  (a  se),  and  not  from  a  supposed  creative  act. 
Only  if  we  adopt  this  view  are  we  entitled  to 
regard  actions  as  worthy  of  moral  approval  or 
disapproval.  They  are  such  not  because  they  are 
not  necessitated,  but  because  they  necessarily 
show  forth  the  nature  of  an  essence  the  freedom 
of  which  consists  in  being  what  it  is.  Yet  he 
could  not  but  find  a  difficulty  in  reconciling  this 
with  his  position  that  the  one  universal  Will  is 
identical  in  all  things,  and  in  each  is '  individuated ' 
only  by  space  and  time.  For  the  Ideas,  like  the 
42 


METAPHYSICS   OF   THE   WILL 

thing-in-itself,  are  eternal,  that  is,  outside  of  time 
as  well  as  space ;  and  all  the  things  now  enumer- 
ated, forces  of  nature,  plant  and  animal  species, 
and  individual  characters  of  men,  are  declared  to 
be  in  themselves  Ideas. 

He  in  part  meets  this  difficulty  by  the  subtlety 
that  time  and  space  do  not,  strictly  speaking, 
determine  individuality,  but  arise  along  with  it. 
The  diremption  of  individualities  becomes  explicit 
in  those  forms.  Yet  he  must  have  perceived  that 
this  is  not  a  complete  answer,  and  various  modifi- 
cations can  be  seen  going  on.  His  first  view 
clearly  was  that  the  individual  is  wholly  imper- 
manent, and  at  death  simply  disappears ;  nothing 
is  left  but  the  one  Will  and  the  universal  Subject 
of  contemplation  identical  in  all.  Metempsychosis 
is  the  best  mythological  rendering  of  what  happens, 
but  it  is  no  more.  Later,  he  puts  forward  the  not 
very  clearly  defined  theory  of  a  '  palingenesia '  by 
which  a  particular  will,  but  not  the  intellect  that 
formerly  accompanied  it,  may  reappear  in  the 
phenomenal  world.  And  the  hospitality  he 
showed  to  stories  of  magic,  clairvoyance,  and 
ghost-seeing,  is  scarcely  compatible  with  the  view 
that  the  individual  will  is  no  more  than  a 
phenomenal  differentiation  of  the  universal  will. 
A  speculation  (not  put  forward  as  anything  more) 
43 


SCHOPENHAUER 

on  the  appearance  of  a  special  providence  in  the 
destiny  of  the  individual,  points,  as  Professor 
Volkelt  has  noted,  to  the  idea  of  a  guidance,  not 
from  without,  but  by  a  kind  of  good  daemon  or 
genius  that  is  the  ultimate  reality  of  the  person. 
On  all  this  we  must  not  lay  too  much  stress ;  but 
there  is  certainly  one  passage  that  can  only  be 
described  as  a  definite  concession  that  the  indi- 
vidual is  real  in  a  sense  not  at  first  allowed. 
Individuality,  it  is  said  in  so  many  words 
(Parerga,  ii.  §  117),  does  not  rest  only  on  the 
'principle  of  individuation '  (time  and  space),  and 
is  therefore  not  through  and  through  phenomenon, 
but  is  rooted  in  the  thing-in-itself.  'How  deep 
its  roots  go  belongs  to  the  questions  which  I  do 
not  undertake  to  answer.' l 

This  tends  to  modify  considerably,  but  does  not 
overthrow,  Schopenhauer's  original  system.  In 
very  general  terras,  he  is  in  the  number  of  the 
'pantheistic'  thinkers;  and  it  is  remarkable,  on 
examination,  how  these,  in  Europe  at  least,  have 
nearly  always  recognised  in  the  end  some  per- 
manent reality  in  the  individual.  This  is  con- 
trary to  first  impressions :  but  the  great  names 
may  be  cited  of  Plotinus,  John  Scotus  Erigena, 
Giordano  Bruno,  Spinoza  (in  Part  v.  of  the  Ethics), 

1  Werke,  ed.  FrauenBtadt,  TO!,  vi.  p.  243. 
44 


METAPHYSICS   OF   THE   WILL 

and  finally  of  Schopenhauer's  special  aversion, 
Hegel,  who  has  been  supposed  most  unfavourable 
of  all  to  any  recognition  of  individuality  as  real. 
It  is  more  true,  Hegel  maintains,  that  the  indi- 
viduality determines  its  world  than  that  it  is 
determined  by  it;  and  there  is  no  explanation 
why  the  determination  should  be  such  and  such 
except  that  the  individuality  was  already  what  it 
is.1  And,  if  Schopenhauer's  more  imaginative 
speculations  seek  countenance  from  the  side  of 
empiricism,  there  is  nothing  in  them  quite  so 
audacious  as  a  speculation  of  J.  S.  Mill  on  dis- 
embodied mind,  thrown  out  during  the  time  when 
he  was  writing  his  Logic? 

The  association  with  pantheism  Schopenhauer 
accepts  in  principle,  though  the  name  is  not  con- 
genial to  him.  In  his  system  the  Will  is  one  and 
all,  like  the  '  Deus '  of  Spinoza.  The  difference  is 
that,  instead  of  ascribing  perfection  to  the  uni- 
verse that  is  its  manifestation,  he  regards  the 

1  Phanomenologie  des  Oeistes,  Jubilaumsausgabe,  ed.  G.  Lasson, 
pp.  201-3. 

2  Letter  to  Robert  Barclay  Fox,  May  10,  1842.     Printed  in 
Appendix  to  Letters  and  Journals  of  Caroline  Fox,  third  ed., 
vol.  ii.  pp.  331-2.     'To  suppose  that  the  eye  is  necessary  to 
sight,'  says  Mill,  '  seems  to  me  the  notion  of  one  immersed  in 
matter.     What  we  call  our  bodily  sensations  are  All  in  the 
mind,  and  would  not  necessarily  or  probably  cease,  because  the 
body  perishes.' 

45 


SCHOPENHAUER 

production  of  a  world  as  a  lapse  from  which 
redemption  is  to  be  sought.  His  doctrine  has 
been  rightly  described,  in  common  with  the  pre- 
dominant philosophical  doctrines  of  his  period, 
as  a  resultant  of  the  deepened  subjective  analysis 
brought  by  Kant  into  modern  philosophy  on  the 
one  side,  and  of  the  return  to  Spinoza  in  the 
quest  for  unity  of  principle  on  the  other.  Why, 
then,  it  may  be  asked,  are  Fichte,  Schelling,  and 
Hegel  the  constant  objects  of  his  attack  ?  The 
true  explanation  is  not  the  merely  external  one, 
that  they  were  his  successful  rivals  for  public 
favour,  but  is  to  be  found  in  a  real  antithesis  of 
thought.  Within  the  limits  of  the  idealism  they 
all  hold  in  common,  Schopenhauer  is  at  the 
opposite  pole.  In  spite  of  his  attempt  to  in- 
corporate the  Platonic  Ideas,  and  in  spite  of  his 
following  of  Kant,  whose  '  intelligible  world '  was 
in  essence  Platonic  or  neo-Platonic,  he  could  find 
no  place  in  his  system  for  a  rational  order  at  the 
summit.  Now  this  order  was  precisely  what 
Fichte  and  Hegel  aimed  at  demonstrating.  If 
Schopenhauer  is  less  unsympathetic  in  his 
references  to  Schelling,  that  is  because  Schelling's 
world-soul  appeared  to  him  to  prefigure  his  own 
attempt  to  discover  in  nature  the  manifestation 
of  a  blindly  striving  will  or  feeling  rather  than 
46 


METAPHYSICS    OF   THE   WILL 

reason.  Suspicious  as  he  shows  himself  of 
possible  plagiarisms  by  others,  the  charge  cannot 
be  retorted  against  himself.  The  supreme  prin- 
ciple of  Fichte,  it  has  been  pointed  out,  has  an 
actively  volitional  character  and  was  formulated 
before  Schopenhauer's :  but  then  it  is  essentially 
rational.  For  Hegel,  what  is  supreme  is  the 
world-reason.  Hence  they  are  at  one  with  Plato 
in  holding  that  in  some  sense  'mind  is  king/ 
For  Schopenhauer,  on  the  contrary,  mind,  or 
pure  intellect,  is  an  emancipated  slave.  Having 
reached  its  highest  point,  and  seen  through  the 
work  of  the  will,  it  does  not  turn  back  and 
organise  it,  but  abolishes  it  as  far  as  its  insight 
extends. 

Yet  to  say  merely  this  is  to  give  a  wrong  im- 
pression of  Schopenhauer.  Starting  though  he 
does  with  blind  will,  and  ending  with  the  flight 
of  the  ascetic  from  the  suffering  inherent  in  the 
world  that  is  the  manifestation  of  such  a  will,  he 
nevertheless,  in  the  intermediate  stages,  makes 
the  world  a  cosmos  and  not  a  chaos.  And  the 
Platonists  on  their  side  have  to  admit  that '  the 
world  of  all  of  us '  does  not  present  itself  on  the 
surface  as  a  manifestation  of  pure  reason,  and 
that  it  is  a  serious  task  to  '  rationalise  '  it.  Where 
he  completely  fails  is  where  the  Platonic  systems 
47 


SCHOPENHAUER 

also  fail,  though  from  the  opposite  starting-point. 
His  attempt  to  derive  presentation,  intellect, 
knowledge,  from  blind  striving,  is  undoubtedly 
a  failure.  But  so  also  is  the  attempt  of  the 
Platonising  thinkers  to  deduce  a  world  of  mixture 
from  a  principle  of  pure  reason  without  aid  from 
anything  else  empirically  assumed.  Not  that  in 
either  case  there  is  failure  to  give  explanations 
in  detail ;  but  in  both  cases  much  is  taken  from 
experience  without  reduction  to  the  principles  of 
the  system.  What  we  may  say  by  way  of  com- 
parison is  this :  that  if  Schopenhauer  had  in  so 
many  words  recognised  an  immanent  Reason  as 
well  as  Will  in  the  reality  of  the  universe,  he 
would  have  formally  renounced  his  pessimism ; 
while  it  cannot  be  said  that  on  the  other  side  a 
more  explicit  empiricism  in  the  account  of  the 
self-manifestation  of  Reason  would  necessarily 
destroy  the  optimism. 


48 


CHAPTER  IV 

AESTHETICS 

A  PORTION  of  Schopenhauer's  system  by  which 
its  pessimism  is  considerably  mitigated  is  his 
theory  of  the  Beautiful  and  of  Fine  Art.  The 
characteristic  of  aesthetic  contemplation  is,  he 
finds,  that  intellect  throws  off  the  yoke  and 
subsists  purely  for  itself  as  clear  mirror  of  the 
world,  free  from  all  subjection  to  practical  pur- 
poses of  the  will.  In  this  state  of  freedom, 
temporary  painlessness  is  attained. 

The  theory  starts  from  his  adaptation  of  the 
Platonic  Ideas.  Regarded  purely  as  an  aesthetic 
theory,  it  departs  from  Plato,  as  he  notes;  for, 
with  the  later  Platonists,  who  took  up  the  defence 
of  poetic  myths  and  of  the  imitative  arts  as 
against  their  master,  he  holds  that  Art  penetrates 
to  the  general  Idea  through  the  particular,  and 
hence  that  the  work  of  art  is  no  mere  '  copy  of  a 
copy.'  The  difference  of  the  Idea  from  the 
Concept  is  that  it  is  not  merely  abstract  and 
D  49 


SCHOPENHAUER 

general,  but  combines  with  generality  the  char- 
acters of  an  intuition. 

The  Ideas,  as  we  have  seen,  constitute  the 
determinate  stages  of  objectivation  of  the  Will. 
The  innumerable  individuals  of  which  the  Ideas 
are  the  patterns  are  subject  to  the  law  of  sufficient 
reason.  They  appear,  that  is  to  say,  under  the 
forms  of  time,  space,  and  causality.  The  Idea  is 
beyond  these  forms,  and  therefore  is  clear  of 
plurality  and  change.  Since  the  law  of  sufficient 
reason  is  the  common  form  under  which  stands 
all  the  subject's  knowledge  so  far  as  the  subject 
knows  as  individual,  the  Ideas  lie  outside  the 
sphere  of  knowledge  of  the  individual  as  such. 
If,  therefore,  the  Ideas  are  to  be  the  object  of 
knowledge,  this  can  only  be  by  annulling  indi- 
viduality in  the  knowing  subject. 

As  thing-in-itself,  the  Will  is  exempt  even 
from  the  first  of  the  forms  of  knowledge,  the  form 
of  being  'object  for  a  subject.'  The  Platonic 
Idea,  on  the  other  hand,  is  necessarily  an  object, 
something  known,  a  presentation.  It  has  laid 
aside,  or  rather  has  not  taken  on,  the  subordinate 
forms;  but  it  has  retained  the  first  and  most 
general  form.  It  is  the  immediate  and  most 
adequate  possible  objectivity  of  the  Will;  whereas 
particular  things  are  an  objectivation  troubled  by 
So 


ESTHETICS 

the  forms  of  which  the  law  of  sufficient  reason  is 
the  common  expression. 

When  intellect  breaks  loose  from  the  service  of 
the  will,  for  which  it  was  originally  destined  in 
the  teleology  of  nature,  then  the  subject  ceases 
to  be  merely  individual  and  becomes  pure  will-less 
subject  of  knowledge.  In  this  state  the  beholder 
no  longer  tracks  out  relations  in  accordance  with 
the  principle  of  sufficient  reason — which  is  the 
mode  of  scientific  as  well  as  of  common  knowledge 
— but  rests  in  fixed  contemplation  of  the  given 
object  apart  from  its  connection  with  anything 
else.  The  contemplator  thus  'lost'  in  the  object, 
it  is  not  the  single  thing  as  such  that  is  known, 
but  the  Idea,  the  eternal  form,  the  immediate 
objectivity  of  the  Will  at  this  stage.  The  correlate 
of  this  object — the  pure  Subject  exempt  from  the 
principle  of  sufficient  reason — is  eternal,  like  the 
Idea. 

The  objecti vation  of  the  Will  appears  faintly  in 
inorganic  things, — clouds,  water,  crystals, — more 
fully  in  the  plant,  yet  more  fully  in  the  animal, 
most  completely  in  man.  Only  the  essential  in 
these  stages  of  objectivation  constitutes  the  Idea. 
Its  development  into  manifold  phenomena  under 
the  forms  of  the  principle  of  sufficient  reason,  is 
unessential,  lies  merely  in  the  mode  of  knowledge 


SCHOPENHAUER 

for  the  individual,  and  has  reality  only  for  this. 
It  is  not  otherwise  with  the  unfolding  of  that 
Idea  which  is  the  completest  objectivation  of  the 
Will.  To  the  Idea  of  Man,  the  occurrences  of 
human  history  are  as  unessential  as  the  shapes 
they  assume  to  the  clouds,  as  the  figures  of  its 
whirlpools  and  foam-drift  to  the  stream,  as  its 
frost-flowers  to  the  ice.  The  same  underlying 
passions  and  dispositions  everlastingly  recur  in 
the  same  modes.  It  is  idle  to  suppose  that  any- 
thing is  gained.  But  also  nothing  is  lost :  so  tho 
Earth-spirit  might  reply  to  one  who  complained 
of  high  endeavours  frustrated,  faculties  wasted, 
promises  of  world -enlightenment  brought  to 
nought ;  for  there  is  infinite  time  to  dispose  of, 
and  all  possibilities  are  for  ever  renewed. 

The  kind  of  knowledge  for  which  the  Ideas  are 
the  object  of  contemplation  finds  its  expression 
in  Art,  the  work  of  genius.  Art  repeats  in  its 
various  media  the  Ideas  grasped  by  pure  contem- 
plation. Its  only  end  is  the  communication  of 
these.  While  Science,  following  the  stream  of 
events  according  to  their  determinate  relations, 
never  reaches  an  ultimate  end,  Art  is  always  at 
the  end.  '  It  stops  the  wheel  of  time ;  relations 
vanish  for  it:  only  the  essence,  the  Idea,  is  its 
object.'  The  characteristic  of  genius  is  a  pre- 
52 


ESTHETICS 

dominant  capacity  for  thus  contemplating  things 
independently  of  the  principle  of  sufficient  reason. 
Since  this  requires  a  forgetting  of  one's  own 
person  and  the  relations  between  it  and  things, 
the  attitude  of  genius  is  simply  the  completest 
'objectivity.'  The  'subjectivity  '  opposed  to  this, 
in  Schopenhauer's  phraseology,  is  preoccupation 
with  the  interests  of  one's  own  will.  It  is,  he 
says,  as  if  there  fell  to  the  share  of  genius  a 
measure  of  intelligence  far  beyond  the  needs  of 
the  individual  will :  and  this  makes  possible  the 
setting  aside  of  individual  interests,  the  stripping 
off  of  the  particular  personality,  so  that  the  subject 
becomes  '  pure  knowing  subject,' '  clear  world-eye,' 
in  a  manner  sufficiently  sustained  for  that  which 
has  been  grasped  to  be  repeated  in  the  work  of 
art.  A  necessary  element  in  genius  is  therefore 
Imagination.  For  without  imagination  to  repre- 
sent, in  a  shape  not  merely  abstract,  things  that 
have  not  come  within  personal  experience,  genius 
would  remain  limited  to  immediate  intuition,  and 
could  not  make  its  vision  apprehensible  by  others. 
Nor  without  imagination  could  the  particular 
things  that  express  the  Idea  be  cleared  of  the 
imperfections  by  which  their  limited  expression 
of  it  falls  short  of  what  nature  was  aiming  at 
in  their  production.  '  Inspiration '  is  ascribed  to 
53 


SCHOPENHAUER 

genius  because  its  characteristic  attitude  is  inter- 
mittent. The  man  of  genius  cannot  always  re- 
main on  a  height,  but  has  to  fall  back  to  the 
level  of  the  common  man,  who  can  scarcely  at  all 
regard  things  except  as  they  affect  his  interests, — 
have  a  relation  to  his  will,  direct  or  indirect. 

This  is  the  statement  in  its  first  outline  of  a 
theory  that  became  one  of  Schopenhauer's  most 
fruitful  topics.  Many  are  the  pages  he  has  de- 
voted to  the  contrast  between  the  man  of  genius 
and  '  the  wholesale  ware  of  nature,  which  she 
turns  out  daily  by  thousands.'  The  genius  is  for 
him  primarily  the  artist.  Scientific  genius  as  a 
distinctive  thing  he  does  not  fully  recognise ;  and 
he  regards  men  of  action,  and  especially  states- 
men, rather  as  men  of  highly  competent  ability 
endowed  with  an  exceptionally  good  physical 
constitution  than  as  men  of  genius  in  the  proper 
sense.  Philosophers  like  himself,  who,  as  he 
frankly  says,  appear  about  once  in  a  hundred 
years,  he  classes  in  the  end  with  the  artists; 
though  this  was  left  somewhat  indeterminate  in 
his  first  exposition.  The  weakness  of  the  man  of 
genius  in  dealing  with  the  ordinary  circumstances 
of  life  he  allows,  and  even  insists  on.  Genius, 
grasping  the  Idea  in  its  perfection,  fails  to  under- 
stand individuals.  A  poet  may  know  man  pro- 
54 


ESTHETICS 

foundly,  and  men  very  ill.  Ho  admits  the 
proximity  of  genius  to  madness  on  one  side,  and 
explains  it  in  this  way.  What  marks  the  stage 
of  actual  madness,  as  distinguished  from  illusion 
or  hallucination,  is  complete  disruption  of  the 
memory  of  past  life,  of  the  history  of  the  personality 
as  something  continuous;  so  that  the  particular 
thing  is  viewed  by  itself,  out  of  relation.  This 
gives  a  kind  of  resemblance  to  the  attitude  of 
genius,  for  which  present  intuition  excludes  from 
view  the  relations  of  things  to  each  other.  Or,  as 
we  may  perhaps  sum  up  his  thought  in  its  most 
general  form,  '  alienation '  or  dissolution  of  per- 
sonality has  the  resemblance  often  noted  between 
extremes  to  the  impersonality,  or,  as  he  calls  it, 
'  objectivity,'  that  is  super-personal. 

In  spite  of  his  contempt  for  the  crowd,  he  has 
to  admit,  of  course,  that  the  capacity  of  genius 
to  recognise  the  Ideas  of  things  and  to  become 
momentarily  impersonal  must  in  some  measure 
belong  to  all  men ;  otherwise,  they  could  not  even 
enjoy  a  work  of  art  when  produced.  Genius  has 
the  advantage  only  in  the  much  higher  degree 
and  the  greater  prolongation  of  the  insight. 
Since,  then,  the  actual  achievement  of  the  artist 
is  to  make  us  look  into  the  world  through  his 
eyes,  the  feelings  for  the  beautiful  and  the  sublime 
55 


SCHOPENHAUER 

may  be  treated  irrespectively  of  the  question 
whether  they  are  aroused  by  nature  and  human 
life  directly  or  by  means  of  art. 

^Esthetic  pleasure  in  contemplation  of  the 
beautiful  proceeds  partly  from  recognition  of  the 
individual  object  not  as  one  particular  thing  but 
as  Platonic  Idea,  that  is,  as  the  enduring  form  of 
this  whole  kind  of  things ;  partly  from  the  con- 
sciousness the  knower  has  of  himself  not  as 
individual,  but  as  pure,  will-less  Subject  of  Know- 
ledge. All  volition  springs  out  of  need,  therefore 
out  of  want,  therefore  out  of  suffering.  No  at- 
tained object  of  will  can  give  permanent  satis- 
faction. Thus,  there  can  be  no  durable  happiness 
or  rest  for  us  as  long  as  we  are  subjects  of  will. 
'  The  Subject  of  Will  lies  continually  on  the  turn- 
ing wheel  of  Ixion,  draws  ever  in  the  sieve  of 
the  Danaides,  is  the  eternally  thirsting  Tantalus. 
But  in  the  moment  of  pure  objective  contem- 
plation, free  from  all  interest  of  the  particular 
subjectivity,  we  enter  a  painless  state :  the  wheel 
of  Ixion  stands  still.  The  Flemish  painters 
produce  this  aesthetic  effect  by  the  sense  of 
disinterested  contemplation  conveyed  in  their 
treatment  of  insignificant  objects.  There  are 
certain  natural  scenes  that  have  power  in  them- 
selves, apart  from  artistic  treatment,  to  put  us  in 
56 


ESTHETICS 

this  state ;  but  the  slightest  obtrusion  of  individual 
interest  destroys  the  rnagic.  Past  and  distant 
objects,  through  their  apparent  detachment,  have 
the  same  power.  The  essential  thing  aesthetically, 
whether  we  contemplate  the  present  or  the  past, 
the  near  or  the  distant,  is  that  only  the  world 
of  presentation  remains;  the  world  as  will  has 
vanished. 

The  difference  between  the  feelings  of  the 
Beautiful  and  of  the  Sublime  is  this.  In  the  feel- 
ing of  the  beautiful,  pure  intelligence  gains  the 
victory  without  a  struggle,  leaving  in  conscious- 
ness only  the  pure  subject  of  knowledge,  so  that 
no  reminiscence  of  the  will  remains.  In  the  feel- 
ing of  the  sublime,  on  the  other  hand,  the  state 
of  pure  intelligence  has  to  be  won  by  a  conscious 
breaking  loose  from  relations  in  the  object  that 
suggest  something  threatening  to  the  will ;  though 
there  must  not  be  actual  danger ;  for  in  that  case 
the  individual  will  itself  would  come  into  play, 
and  aesthetic  detachment  would  cease.  Elevation 
above  the  sense  of  terror  has  not  only  to  be  con- 
sciously won  but  consciously  maintained,  and 
involves  a  continuous  reminiscence,  not  indeed  of 
any  individual  will,  but  of  the  will  of  man  in 
general,  so  far  as  it  is  expressed  through  its  objec- 
tivity, the  human  body,  confronted  by  forces 
57 


SCHOPENHAUER 

hostile  to  it.  Pre-eminently  this  feeling  arises 
from  contrast  between  the  immensities  of  space 
and  time  and  the  apparent  insignificance  of  man. 
It  means  in  the  last  resort  that  the  beholder  is 
upheld  by  the  consciousness  that  as  pure  subject 
of  knowledge  (not  as  individual  subject)  he  him- 
self bears  within  him  all  the  worlds  and  all  the 
ages,  and  is  eternal  as  the  forces  that  vainly  seem 
to  threaten  him  with  annihilation. 

On  the  objective  side,  and  apart  from  the  sub- 
jective distinction  just  set  forth,  the  sublime  and 
the  beautiful  are  not  essentially  different.  In 
both  cases  alike,  the  object  of  aesthetic  contem- 
plation is  not  the  single  thing,  but  the  Idea  that 
is  striving  towards  manifestation  in  it.  Whatever 
is  viewed  aesthetically  is  viewed  out  of  relation  to 
time  and  space :  '  along  with  the  law  of  sufficient 
reason  the  single  thing  and  the  knowing  indi- 
vidual are  taken  away,  and  nothing  remains  over 
but  the  Idea  and  the  pure  Subject  of  Knowledge, 
which  together  make  up  the  adequate  objectivity 
of  the  Will  at  this  stage.'  There  is  thus  a  sense 
in  which  everything  is  beautiful ;  since  the  Will 
appears  in  everything  at  some  stage  of  objectivity, 
and  this  means  that  it  is  the  expression  of  some 
Idea.  But  one  thing  can  be  more  beautiful  than 
another  by  facilitating  aesthetic  contemplation. 
58 


.ESTHETICS 

This  facilitation  proceeds  either  from  the  greater 
clearness  and  perfection  with  which  the  particular 
thing  shows  forth  the  Idea  of  its  kind,  or  from  the 
higher  stage  of  objectivation  to  which  that  Idea 
corresponds.  Man  being  the  highest  stage  of 
objectivation  of  the  Will,  the  revelation  of  his 
essence  is  the  highest  aim  of  art.  In  aesthetic 
contemplation  of  inorganic  nature  and  vegetative 
life,  whether  in  the  reality  or  through  the  medium 
of  art,  and  in  appreciation  of  architecture,  the  sub- 
jective aspect,  that  is  to  say,  the  enjoyment  of  pure 
will-less  knowledge,  is  predominant;  the  Ideas 
themselves  being  here  lower  stages  of  objectivity. 
On  the  other  hand,  when  animals  ami  men  are 
the  object  of  aesthetic  contemplation  or  representa- 
tion, the  enjoyment  consists  more  in  the  objective 
apprehension  of  those  Ideas  in  which  the  essence 
of  the  Will  is  most  clearly  and  fully  manifested. 

Of  all  Schopenhauer's  work,  its  aesthetic  part 
has  met  with  the  most  general  appreciation. 
Here  especially  he  abounds  in  observations  drawn 
directly,  in  his  own  phrase,  from  intuition.  To 
make  a  selection  of  these,  however,  is  not  appro- 
priate to  a  brief  sketch  like  the  present.  I  pass 
on,  therefore,  to  those  portions  of  his  theory  of 
Art  by  which  he  makes  the  transition,  in  terms  of 
his  system,  to  Morality. 

59 


SCHOPENHAUER 

From  Architecture  onward  the  arts  are  obliged 
to  represent  the  Will  as  divided.  Here,  at  the 
first  stage,  its  division  subsists  only  in  a  conflict 
of  inorganic  forces  which  have  to  be  brought  to 
equilibrium.  The  conflict  between  weight  and 
rigidity  is  in  truth  the  only  aesthetic  material  of 
architecture  as  a  fine  art.  When  we  come  to 
animal  and  lastly  to  human  life,  which,  in  the 
Plastic  Arts  and  in  Poetry,  as  form,  individualised 
expression,  and  action,  is  the  highest  object  of 
esthetic  representation,  the  vehemence  of  divided 
will  is  fully  revealed ;  and  here  too  is  revealed 
the  essential  identity  of  every  will  with  our  own. 
In  the  words  of  the  Indian  wisdom,  '  Tat  twam 
asi ' ;  '  that  thou  art.'  Under  the  head  of  Ethics 
it  will  be  shown  expressly  that  by  this  insight, 
when  it  reacts  on  the  will,  the  will  can  deny  itself. 
For  the  temporary  release  from  its  striving,  given 
in  sesthetic  contemplation,  is  then  substituted 
permanent  release.  To  this  'resignation,'  the 
innermost  essence  of  all  virtue  and  holiness,  and 
the  final  redemption  from  the  world,  Art  itself,  at 
its  highest  stages,  points  the  way. 

The  summits  of  pictorial  and  poetic  art  Schopen- 
hauer finds  in  the  great  Italian  painters  so  far  as 
they  represent  the  ethical  spirit  of  Christianity, 
and  in  the  tragic  poets,  ancient  and  modern.  It 
60 


ESTHETICS 

is  true  that  the  poverty  of  their  sacred  history  or 
mythology  puts  the  Christian  artists  at  a  disad- 
vantage; but  events  are  merely  the  accidents  of 
their  art.  Not  in  these,  as  related  according  to 
the  law  of  sufficient  reason,  is  the  essence,  but  in 
the  spirit  we  divine  through  the  forms  portrayed. 
In  their  representation  of  men  full  of  that  spirit, 
and  especially  in  the  eyes,  we  see  mirrored  the 
knowledge  that  has  seized  the  whole  essence  of 
the  world  and  of  life,  and  that  has  reacted  on 
the  will,  not  so  as  to  give  it  motives,  but  as  a 
'  quietive ' ;  whence  proceeds  complete  resignation, 
and  with  it  the  annulling  of  the  will  and  of  the 
whole  essence  of  this  world.  Of  tragedy,  the 
subject-matter  is  the  conflict  of  the  will  with 
itself  at  its  highest  stage  of  objectivity.  Here 
also  the  end  is  the  resignation  brought  on  by 
complete  knowledge  of  the  essence  of  the  world. 
The  hero,  on  whom  at  last  this  knowledge  has 
acted  as  a  quietive,  gives  up,  not  merely  life,  but 
the  whole  will  to  live.  'The  true  meaning  of 
tragedy  is  the  deeper  insight,  that  what  the  hero 
expiates  is  not  his  particular  sins,  but  original  sin, 
that  is,  the  guilt  of  existence  itself.'  To  illustrate 
this  position  Schopenhauer  is  fond  of  quoting  a 
passage  from  Calderon  which  declares  that  the 
greatest  sin  of  man  is  to  have  been  born. 
61 


SCHOPENHAUER 

It  seems  strange  that,  after  deriding  as  he  does 
the  popular  notion  of '  poetic  justice/  so  detached 
a  thinker  should  imagine  an  at  least  equally  one- 
sided view  to  receive  its  final  confirmation  from 
the  Spanish  dramatist's  poetic  phrasing  of  a 
Christian  dogma.  The  great  tragic  poets,  for 
Schopenhauer  also,  are  ^Eschylus,  Sophocles  and 
Shakespeare.  Now  it  is  safe  to  say  that  by  none 
of  these  was  any  such  general  doctrine  held  either 
in  conceptual  or  in  intuitive  form.  The  whole 
effect  of  any  kind  of  art,  of  course  he  would 
admit,  cannot  be  packed  into  a  formula ;  but  if 
we  seek  one  as  an  aid  to  understanding,  some 
adaptation  of  his  own  theory  of  the  sublime  would 
probably  serve  much  better  as  applied  to  tragedy 
than  his  direct  theory  of  the  drama.  In  the  case 
of  pictorial  art,  all  that  is  proved  by  what  he  says 
about  the  representation  of  ascetic  saintliness,  is 
that  this,  like  many  other  things,  can  be  so 
brought  within  the  scope  of  art  as  to  make  us 
momentarily  identify  ourselves  with  its  Idea  in 
the  impersonal  manner  he  has  himself  described. 
His  purely  aesthetic  theory  is  quite  adequate  to 
the  case,  without  any  assumption  that  this  is  the 
representation  of  what  is  best.  Art,  pictorial  or 
poetic,  can  no  more  prove  pessimism  than  opti- 
mism. We  pick  out  expressions  of  one  or  the 
62 


AESTHETICS 

other  for  quotation  according  to  our  moods  or 
subjective  preferences  ;  but,  if  we  have  the  feeling 
for  art  itself,  our  sense  of  actual  aesthetic  value 
ought  to  be  independent  of  these. 

Schopenhauer's  aesthetic  theory,  however,  does 
not  end  here.  There  follows  the  part  of  it  by 
which  he  has  had  an  influence  on  artists  them- 
selves. For  him,  a  position  separate  from  all  the 
other  arts  is  held  by  music.  While  the  rest 
objectify  the  Will  mediately,  that  is  to  say,  by 
means  of  the  Ideas,  Music  is  as  immediate  an 
objectivation  of  the  whole  Will  as  the  world  itself, 
or  as  the  Ideas,  of  which  the  pluraliscd  pheno- 
menon constitutes  the  sum  of  particular  things. 
The  other  arts  speak  of  the  shadow,  music  of  the 
substance.  There  is  indeed  a  parallelism,  an  ana- 
logy, between  Music  and  the  Ideas;  yet  Music 
never  expresses  the  phenomenon  in  which  these  are 
manifested,  but  only  the  inner  essence  behind  the 
appearance,  the  Will  itself.  In  a  sense  it  renders 
not  feeling  in  its  particularity,  but  feeling  in 
abstractor  joy,  sorrow,  not  a  joy,  a  sorrow.  The 
phenomenal  world  and  music  are  to  be  regarded 
as  two  different  expressions  of  the  same  thing. 
The  world  might  be  called  embodied  Music  as 
well  as  embodied  Will.  '  Melodies  are  to  a  certain 
extent  like  general  concepts,  an  abstract  of  reality.' 
63 


SCHOPENHAUER 

A  complete  explanation  of  music,  that  is,  a  de- 
tailed repetition  of  it  in  concepts,  were  this 
possible,  would  be  a  complete  explanation  of  the 
world  (since  both  express  the  same  thing)  and 
therefore  a  true  and  final  philosophy.  As  music 
only  reaches  its  perfection  in  the  full  harmony, 
'  so  the  one  Will  out  of  time  finds  its  perfect  objec- 
tivation  only  in  complete  union  of  all  the  stages 
which  in  innumerable  degrees  of  heightened  dis- 
tinctness reveal  its  essence.'  But  here,  too, 
Schopenhauer  adds,  the  Will  is  felt,  and  can 
be  proved,  to  be  a  divided  will ;  and  the  deliverance 
wrought  by  this  supreme  art,  as  by  all  the  others, 
is  only  temporary. 


64 


CHAPTER  V 

ETHICS 

PERMANENT  redemption  from  the  suffering  of  the 
world  is  to  be  found  only  in  the  holiness  of  the 
ascetic ;  but  to  this  there  are  many  stages,  con- 
stituting the  generally  accepted  human  virtues. 
Of  these  Schopenhauer  has  a  rational  account 
to  give  in  terms  of  his  philosophy;  and  if  the 
last  stage  does  not  seem  to  follow  by  logical 
sequence  from  the  others,  this  is  only  what  is  to 
be  expected ;  for  it  is  reached,  in  his  view,  by  a 
sort  of  miracle.  To  the  highest  kind  of  intuitive 
knowledge,  from  which  the  ascetic  denial  of  the 
will  proceeds,  artistic  contemplation  ought  to 
prepare  the  way ;  and  so  also,  on  his  principles, 
ought  the  practice  of  justice  and  goodness.  Yet 
he  is  obliged  to  admit  that  few  thus  reach  the 
goal.  Of  those  that  do  reach  it,  the  most  arrive 
through  personal  suffering,  which  may  be  deserved. 
A  true  miracle  is  often  worked  in  the  repentant 
criminal,  by  which  final  deliverance  is  achieved. 
E  65 


SCHOPENHAUER 

Though  the  '  intelligible  character  '  is  unalterable, 
and  the  empirical  character  can  only  be  the  un- 
folding of  this,  as  every  great  dramatist  intuitively 
recognises,  yet  the  '  convertites,'  like  Duke 
Frederick  in  As  You  Like  It,  are  not  to  be  regarded 
as  hypocrites.  The  '  second  voyage  '  to  the  har- 
bour, that  of  the  disappointed  egoist,  on  condition 
of  this  miracle,  brings  the  passenger  to  it  as 
surely  as  the  first,  that  of  the  true  saints,  which  is 
only  for  the  few.  And  in  these  equally  a  miracu- 
lous conversion  of  the  will  has  to  be  finally 
worked. 

At  the  entrance  to  his  distinctive  theory  of 
ethics,  Schopenhauer  places  a  restatement  of  his 
metaphysics  as  the  possible  basis  of  a  mode  of 
contemplating  life  which,  he  admits,  has  some 
community  with  an  optimistic  pantheism.  The 
Will,  through  the  presentation  and  the  accom- 
panying intelligence  developed  in  its  service, 
becomes  conscious  that  that  which  it  wills  is  pre- 
cisely the  world,  life  as  it  is.  To  call  it '  the  will 
to  live '  is  therefore  a  pleonasm.  '  Will '  and  '  will 
to  live  '  are  equivalent.  For  this  will,  life  is  ever- 
lastingly a  certainty.  '  Neither  the  will,  the  thing- 
in-itself  in  all  phenomena,  nor  the  subject  of 
knowledge,  the  spectator  of  all  phenomena,  is  ever 
touched  by  birth  and  death.'  It  is  true  that  the 
66 


ETHICS 

individual  appears  and  disappears ;  but  individu- 
ality is  illusory,  Past  and  future  exist  only  in 
conceptual  thought.  '  The  form  of  life  is  a  present 
without  end,  howsoever  the  individuals,  pheno- 
mena of  the  Idea,  come  into  existence  and  vanish 
in  time,  like  fugitive  dreams.'  Only  as  pheno- 
menon is  each  man  different  from  the  other 
things  of  the  world :  as  thing-in-itself  he  is  the 
Will,  which  appears  in  all,  and  death  takes  away 
the  illusion  that  divides  his  consciousness  from 
the  rest.  '  Death  is  a  sleep  in  which  the  individu- 
ality is  forgotten :  everything  else  wakes  again, 
or  rather  has  remained  awake.'  It  is,  in  the  ex- 
pression adopted  by  Schopenhauer  later,  an 
awakening  from  the  dream  of  life :  though  this 
bears  with  it  somewhat  different  implications ; 
and,  as  has  been  said,  his  theory  of  individuality 
became  modified. 

With  the  doctrine  of  the  eternal  life  of  the 
Will  are  connected  Schopenhauer's  theories,  de- 
veloped later,  of  the  immortality  of  the  species 
and  of  individualised  sexual  love.  The  latter  is 
by  itself  a  remarkable  achievement,  and  con- 
stitutes the  one  distinctly  new  development 
brought  to  completion  in  his  later  years ;  for  the 
modifications  in  his  theory  of  individuality  are 
only  tentative.  His  theory  of  love  has  a  deter- 
67" 


SCHOPENHAUER 

minate  conclusion,  of  great  value  for  science,  and 
not  really  compatible,  it  seems  to  me,  with  his 
pessimism.  In  its  relation  to  ethics,  on  which  he 
insisted,  it  is  rightly  placed  in  the  position  it 
occupies,  between  the  generalised  statement  of 
his  metaphysics  just  now  set  forth  on  the  one 
side,  and  his  theory  of  human  virtue  on  the 
other. 

The  teleology  that  manifests  itself  in  individual- 
ised love  is,  in  his  view,  not  related  in  reality  to 
the  interests  of  the  individual  life,  but  to  those  of 
the  species.  That  this  is  immortal  follows  from 
the  eternity  of  the  Idea  it  unfolds.1  The  end 
sought  is  aimed  at  unconsciously  by  the  person. 
Fundamentally,  for  Schopenhauer,  teleology  must 
of  course  be  unconscious,  since  the  will  is  blind, 
and  will,  not  intelligence,  is  primordial.  Its 
typical  case  is  the  instinct  of  animals;  but  the 
'  instinctive '  character  belongs  also  to  the  accom- 
plishment of  the  highest  aims,  as  in  art  and 
virtue.  What  characterises  individualised  love 
internally  is  the  aim,  attributed  to  '  nature '  or 
'the  species,'  at  a  certain  typical  beauty  or  per- 

1  The  disappearance  of  species  in  time  raises  difficulties  in 
more  than  one  way  for  his  philosophy  ;  but  he  formally  escapes 
refutation  by  the  suggestion,  already  noted,  that  the  Idea  need 
not  always  be  manifested  phenomenally  in  the  same  world. 
This,  howevar,  he  did  not  work  out. 

68 


ETHICS 

fection  of  the  offspring.  The  lover  is  therefore 
deluded  in  thinking  that  he  is  seeking  his  own 
happiness.  What  looks  through  the  eyes  of 
lovers  is  the  genius  of  the  race,  meditating  on  the 
composition  of  the  next  generation.  It  may,  in  the 
complexity  of  circumstances,  be  thwarted.  When 
it  reaches  its  end,  often  personal  happiness  is 
sacrificed.  Marriages  dictated  by  interest  tend 
to  be  happier  than  love-matches.  Yet,  though 
the  sacrifice  of  the  individual  to  the  race  is  in- 
voluntary in  these,  egoism  is  after  all  overcome ; 
hence  they  are  quite  rightly  the  object  of  a 
certain  admiration  and  sympathy,  while  the 
prudential  ones  are  looked  upon  with  a  tinge  of 
contempt.  For  here  too  that  element  appears 
which  alone  gives  nobility  to  the  life  either  of 
intellect  or  of  art  or  of  moral  virtue,  namely,  the 
rising  above  a  subjective  interest  of  the  individual 
will. 

No  doubt  there  are  touches  of  pessimism  in 
this  statement ;  but  the  general  theory  does  not 
seem  reconcilable  finally  with  pessimism  as 
Schopenhauer  understands  it.  For  it  is  a  definitely 
stated  position  of  his  that  nature  keeps  up  the 
process  of  the  world  by  yielding  just  enough  to 
prevent  discontinuance  of  the  striving  for  an 
illusory  end.  Yet  he  admits  here  in  the  result 
69 


SCHOPENHAUER 

something  beyond  bare  continuance  of  life ;  for 
this  is  already  secured  without  the  particular 
modification  of  feeling  described.  What  the  feel- 
ing is  brought  in  to  secure  is  a  better  realisation 
of  the  type  in  actual  individuals;  and  such  re- 
alisation is  certainly  more  than  bare  subsistence 
with  the  least  possible  expenditure  of  nature's 
resources. 

As  the  immediate  preliminary  to  his  ethics 
proper,  Schopenhauer  restates  his  doctrine  on  the 
intelligible  and  the  empirical  character  in  man, 
and  lays  down  a  generalised  psychological  posi- 
tion regarding  the  suffering  inherent  in  life. 
Everything  as  phenomenon,  we  have  seen  already, 
is  determined  because  it  is  subject  to  the  law  of 
sufficient  reason.  On  the  other  hand,  everything 
as  thing- in-itself  is  free;  for  'freedom'  means 
only  non-subjection  to  that  law.  The  intelligible 
character  of  each  man  is  an  indivisible,  unalter- 
able act  of  will  out  of  time;  the  developed  and 
explicit  phenomenon  of  this  in  time  and  space  is 
the  empirical  character.  Man  is  his  own  work, 
not  in  the  light  of  knowledge,  but  before  all 
knowledge ;  this  is  secondary  and  an  instrument. 
Ultimately,  freedom  is  a  mystery,  and  takes  us 
beyond  even  will  as  the  name  for  the  thing-in- 
itself.  In  reality,  that  which  is  '  will  to  live '  need 
70 


ETHICS 

not  have  been  such  (though  we  cannot  see  how 
this  is  so),  but  has  become  such  from  itself  and 
from  nothing  else.  This  is  its  '  aseitas.'  Hence 
it  is  in  its  power  to  deny  itself  as  will  to  live. 
When  it  does  this,  the  redemption  (like  the  fall) 
comes  from  itself.  This  denial  does  not  mean 
annihilation,  except  relatively  to  all  that  we  know 
under  the  forms  of  our  understanding.  For  the 
will,  though  the  nearest  we  can  get  to  the  thing- 
in-itself,  is  in  truth  a  partially  phenomenalised 
expression  of  this.  As  the  will  to  live  expresses 
itself  phenomenally,  so  also  does  the  denial  of  the 
will  to  live,  when  this,  by  special  'grace,'  is 
achieved.  Only  in  man  does  the  freedom  thus 
attained  find  phenomenal  expression.  That  man 
can  attain  to  it  proves  that  in  him  the  will  has 
reached  its  highest  possible  stage  of  objectivation ; 
for,  after  it  has  turned  back  and  denied  itself, 
there  is  evidently  nothing  more  that  we  can  call 
existence,  that  is  to  say,  phenomenal  existence, 
beyond.  What  there  is  beyond  in  the  truth  of 
being  is  something  that  the  mystics  know — or 
rather,  possess,  for  it  is  beyond  knowledge — but 
cannot  communicate. 

The  psychological  reason  that  can  be  assigned 
for  the  ascetic  flight  from  the  world  is  that  all 
pleasure,  happiness,  satisfaction,  is  merely  nega- 


SCHOPENHAUER 

tive.  The  will  is  a  striving  that  has  no  ultimate 
aim.  It  is  sustained  only  by  hindrances.  Hin- 
drance means  suffering;  and  every  satisfaction 
attained  is  only  temporary,  a  mere  liberation  from 
need,  want,  pain,  which  is  positive.  Suffering 
increases  with  the  degree  of  consciousness.  The 
life  of  civilised  man  is  an  alternation  between 
pain  and  ennui,  which  can  itself  become  as  in- 
tolerable a  suffering  as  anything.  The  problem 
of  moral  philosophy,  then,  is  ultimately  how 
redemption  from  such  a  world  is  to  be  attained, 
but  only  so  far  as  this  is  a  matter  of  conceptual 
knowledge.  For  philosophy,  being  from  beginning 
to  end  theoretical,  cannot  work  the  practical 
miracle  by  which  the  will  denies  itself. 

The  intuitive,  as  distinguished  from  merely 
conceptual,  knowledge  by  which  the  return  is 
made,  consists  essentially  in  a  clear  insight  into 
the  identity  of  the  suffering  will  in  all  things  and 
the  necessity  of  its  suffering  as  long  as  it  is  will 
to  live.  This,  then,  is  the  true  foundation  of 
morality.  The  universe  as  metaphysical  thing-in- 
itself,  as  noumenon,  has  an  ethical  meaning.  All 
its  stages  of  objectivation,  though  in  the  process 
what  seems  to  be  aimed  at  is  preservation  of  the 
will  as  manifested,  have  in  truth  for  their  ulti- 
mate aim  its  redemption  by  suppression  of 
72 


ETHICS 

the    phenomenal  world    in  which  it  manifests 
itself. 

Affirmation  of  the  will  is  affirmation  of  the 
body,  which  is  the  objectivity  of  the  will.  The 
sexual  impulse,  since  it  affirms  life  beyond  the 
death  of  the  individual,  is  the  strongest  of  self- 
affirmations.  In  it  is  found  the  meaning  of  the 
mythical  representation  that  has  taken  shape  in 
the  theological  dogma  of  original  sin.  For  by  this 
affirmation  going  beyond  the  individual  body, 
suffering  and  death,  as  the  necessary  accompani- 
ment of  the  phenomenon  of  life,  are  reaffirmed, 
and  the  possibility  of  redemption  this  time 
declared  fruitless.  But  through  the  whole  process 
there  runs  eternal  justice.  The  justification  of 
suffering  is  that  the  will  affirms  itself;  and  the 
self-affirmation  is  justified  by  payment  of  the 
penalty. 

Before  the  final  redemption — which  is  not  for 
the  world  but  for  the  individual — there  are  many 
stages  of  ethical  progress.  These  consist  in  the 
gradual  overcoming  of  egoism  by  sympathy.  And 
here  Schopenhauer  proceeds  to  set  forth  a  practical 
scheme  for  the  social  life  of  man,  differing  from 
ordinary  utilitarianism  only  by  reducing  all  sym- 
pathy to  pity,  in  accordance  with  his  view  that 
there  can  be  no  such  thing  as  positive  happiness. 
73 


SCHOPENHAUER 

He  begins  with  a  theory  of  justice,  legal  and 
moral,  very  much  on  the  lines  of  Hobbes,  except 
that  he  regards  it  as  up  to  a  certain  point  a 
priori.  Here  he  is  consistent  throughout.  As 
in  his  philosophical  account  of  mathematics  and 
physics,  so  also  in  his  aesthetics  and  ethics,  he 
retained,  side  by  side  with  a  strong  empirical 
tendency,  belief  in  certain  irreducible  a  priori 
forms  without  which  our  knowledge  cannot  be 
constituted.  The  pure  ethical  theory  of  justice, 
he  says,  bears  to  the  political  theory  the  relation 
of  pure  to  applied  mathematics.  Injustice  he 
holds  to  be  the  positive  conception.  It  means 
the  breaking  into  the  sphere  of  another  person's 
will  to  live.  The  self-affirmation  of  the  will  that 
appears  in  one  individual  body  is  extended  to 
denial  of  the  will  that  appears  in  other  bodies. 
Justice  consists  in  non-encroachment.  There  is 
a  '  natural  right,'  or  '  moral  right,'  of  resistance  to 
injustice  by  infliction  of  what,  apart  from  the  at- 
tempted encroachment,  would  be  wrong.  Either 
force  or  deception  may  be  used ;  as  either  may  be 
the  instrument  of  injustice.  The  purely  ethical 
doctrine  of  justice  applies  only  to  action ;  since 
only  the  not  doing  of  injustice  depends  on  us. 
With  the  State  and  its  laws,  the  relation  is  reversed. 
The  object  of  these  is  to  prevent  the  suffering  of 
74 


ETHICS 

injustice.  The  State  is  not  directed  against  egoism, 
but  has  sprung  out  of  a  rationalised  collective 
egoism.  It  has  for  its  purpose  only  to  avoid  the 
inconvenient  consequences  of  individual  aggres- 
sions on  others.  Outside  of  the  State,  there  is  a 
right  of  self-defence  against  injustice,  but  no  right 
of  punishment.  The  punishment  threatened  by 
the  State  is  essentially  a  motive  against  commit- 
ting wrong,  intended  to  supply  the  place  of  ethical 
motives  for  those  who  are  insufficiently  accessible 
to  them.  Actual  infliction  of  it  is  the  carrying 
out  of  the  threat  when  it  has  failed,  so  that  in 
general  the  expectation  of  the  penalty  may  be 
certain.  Revenge,  which  has  a  view  to  the  past, 
cannot  be  justified  ethically :  punishment  is 
directed  only  to  the  future.  There  is  no  right 
in  any  one  to  set  himself  up  as  a  moral  judge 
and  inflict  pain  ;  but  man  has  a  right  to  do  what 
is  needful  for  social  security.  The  criminal's  acts 
are  of  course  necessitated;  but  he  cannot  justly 
complain  of  being  punished  for  them,  since  it  is 
ultimately  from  himself,  from  what  he  is,  that 
they  sprang. 

With  the  doctrine  of '  eternal  justice,'  touched 

on  above,   we    pass  into   a  different    region  of 

thought.    What  is  responsible  for   the  guilt  in 

the  world  is  the  Will  by  which  everything  exists, 

75 


SCHOPENHAUER 

and  the  suffering  everlastingly  falls  where  the 
guilt  is.  Take  the  case  of  apparently  unpunished 
injustice  (from  the  human  point  of  view)  expressing 
itself  in  the  extreme  form  of  deliberate  cruelty. 
Through  this  also,  eternal  justice,  from  which 
there  is  no  escape,  is  fulfilled.  '  The  torturer  and 
the  tortured  are  one.  The  former  errs  in  thinking 
he  has  no  share  in  the  torture;  the  latter  in 
thinking  he  has  no  share  in  the  guilt.'  For  all 
the  pain  of  the  world  is  the  expiation  of  the  sin 
involved  in  the  self-affirmation  of  will,  and  the 
Will  as  thing-in-itself  is  one  and  the  same  in  all. 

If  this  could  satisfy  any  one,  there  would  be  no 
need  to  go  further.  The  whole  being  as  it  ought 
to  be,  why  try  to  rectify  details  that  are  absolutely 
indifferent  ?  But  of  course  the  implication  is  that 
individuality  is  simply  illusory ;  and  this,  as  has 
been  said,  was  a  position  that  Schopenhauer 
neither  could  nor  did  consistently  maintain. 
Indeed,  immediately  after  setting  forth  this  theory 
of 'eternal  justice,' he  goes  on  to  a  relative  justi- 
fication of  those  acts  of  disinterested  vengeance 
by  which  a  person  knowingly  sacrifices  his  own 
life  for  the  sake  of  retribution  on  some  extra- 
ordinary criminal.  This,  he  says,  is  a  form  of 
punishment,  not  mere  revenge,  although  it  in- 
volves an  error  concerning  the  nature  of  eternal 
76 


ETHICS 

justice.  Suicide  involves  a  similar  error,  in  so 
far  as  it  supposes  that  the  real  being  of  the  indi- 
vidual can  be  assailed  through  its  phenomenal 
manifestation.  It  is  not  a  denial  of  the  will  to 
live,  but  a  strong  affirmation  of  it,  only  not  in  the 
given  circumstances :  different  circumstances  are 
desired  with  such  intensity  that  the  present  cannot 
be  borne.  Therefore  the  individual  manifestation 
of  the  will  is  not  suppressed.  Yet,  one  might 
reply,  if  individuality  is  an  illusion  attached  to 
the  appearance  in  time  and  space  of  a  particular 
organism,  it  would  seem  that,  with  the  dis- 
appearance of  this,  all  that  distinguishes  the 
individual  must  disappear  also. 

Schopenhauer  had  no  will  thus  to  escape  from 
life;  nor  did  he  afterwards  devote  himself  to 
expounding  further  his  theory  of  eternal  justice. 
What  he  wrote  later,  either  positively  or  as  mere 
speculation,  implies  both  greater  reality  in  the 
individual  and  more  of  cosmic  equity  to  corre- 
spond. His  next  step,  even  at  his  first  stage,  is 
to  continue  the  exposition  of  a  practicable  ethics 
for  human  life.  His  procedure  consists  in  adding 
beneficence  to  justice,  with  the  proviso  already 
mentioned,  which  is  required  by  his  psychology, 
that  all  beneficence  can  consist  only  in  the  relief 
of  pain.  For  Schopenhauer,  as  for  Comte,  what 
77 


SCHOPENHAUER 

is  to  be  overcome  is  '  egoism,'  an  excessive  degree 
of  which  is  the  mark  of  the  character  we  call 
'  bad.'  The  '  good '  is  what  Comte  and  Spencer 
call  the  '  altruistic  '  character.  This  difference 
between  characters  Schopenhauer  goes  on  to 
explain  in  terms  of  his  metaphysics.  The  egoist 
is  so  deluded  by  the  principle  of  individuation 
that  he  supposes  an  absolute  cleft  between  his 
own  person  and  all  others.  The  remorse  of 
conscience  from  which  he  suffers  proceeds  in 
part  from  an  obscure  perception  that  the  principle 
of  individuation  is  illusory.  Genuine  virtue 
springs  out  of  the  intuitive  (not  merely  abstract) 
knowledge  that  recognises  in  another  individu- 
ality the  same  essence  as  in  one's  own.  The 
characteristic  of  the  good  man  is  that  he  makes 
less  difference  than  is  customary  between  himself 
and  others.  Justice  is  an  intermediate  stage 
between  the  encroaching  egoism  of  the  bad  and 
positive  goodness.  In  the  renunciation  of  rights 
of  property,  and  provision  for  all  personal  needs 
without  aid  from  others,  practised  by  some 
religious  and  philosophical  ascetics,  it  is  passing 
over  into  something  more.  There  is,  however, 
a  certain  misunderstanding  involved  in  so  inter- 
preting strict  justice;  for  there  are  many  ways 
in  which  the  rich  and  powerful  can  be  positively 
78 


ETHICS 

beneficent.  At  the  other  extreme,  when  they 
simply  live  on  their  inherited  wealth,  without 
doing  anything  in  return,  their  mode  of  life  is 
morally,  though  not  legally,  unjust.  Rights  of 
property  Schopenhauer  derived  from  labour 
spent  on  the  things  appropriated.  The  injustice, 
in  many  ways,  of  the  present  social  order  he  quite 
recognises.  If  he  has  no  sympathy  with  revo- 
lutions, it  is  because  he .  has  no  belief  in  the 
realisation  of  an  ideal  state.  This  follows  from 
his  view  of  history.  Human  life,  it  is  his  con- 
viction, never  has  been  and  never  will  be  dif- 
ferent as  a  whole.  Redemption  from  evil  can  be 
attained  only  by  the  individual.  All  that  the 
State  can  do  is  to  provide  certain  very  general 
conditions  of  security  under  which  there  will  be 
no  hindrance  to  those  who  desire  to  live  in 
accordance  with  a  moral  ideal. 

Yet  there  are  qualifications  to  make.  Many 
passages  in  Schopenhauer's  writings  prove  his 
firm  belief  in  the  future  triumph  of  reason  over 
superstition.  It  is  to  the  honour  of  humanity, 
he  says,  that  so  detestable  a  form  of  evil 
as  organised  religious  persecution  has  appeared 
only  in  one  section  of  history.  And,  hi  his 
own  personal  case,  he  has  the  most  complete 
confidence  that  the  truths  he  has  put  forth 
79 


SCHOPENHAUER 

cannot  fail  sometime  to  gain  a  hearing.  In  all 
cases,  error  is  only  temporary,  and  truth  will 
prevail.  His  language  on  this  subject,  and  in- 
deed often  on  others,  is  indistinguishable  from 
that  of  an  optimist. 

In  the  last  resort,  his  pessimism  entrenches 
itself  behind  the  psychological  proposition  that 
every  satisfaction  is  negative,  being  only  the 
removal  of  a  pain.  If  this  is  unsustainable,  there 
is  nothing  finally  in  his  Metaphysics  of  Will  to 
necessitate  the  pessimistic  conclusion  drawn. 
The  mode  of  deduction  by  which  he  proceeds  is 
to  argue  first  to  the  position  already  noticed : 
that  all  that  love  of  others  on  which  morality  is 
based  is  fundamentally  pity.  True  benevolence 
can  only  be  the  desire  to  relieve  others'  pain, 
springing  from  the  identification  of  this  with 
our  own.  For  that  reason,  moral  virtue  must 
finally  pass  over  into  asceticism — the  denial  of 
the  will  to  live.  In  others,  if  we  are  able  to  see 
through  the  principle  of  individuation,  we  re- 
cognise the  same  essence  as  in  ourselves,  and  we 
perceive  that  as  long  as  this  wills  it  must 
necessarily  suffer.  The  end  then  is  to  destroy  the 
will  to  live.  This  is  to  be  done  by  askesis,  self- 
mortification.  The  first  step  is  complete  chastity. 
If,  says  Schopenhauer,  the  highest  phenomenon 
80 


ETHICS 

of  will,  that  is,  man,  were  to  disappear  through 
a  general  refusal  to  affirm  life  beyond  the 
individual  body,  man's  weaker  reflexion  in  the 
animal  world  would  disappear  also,  and  the 
consciousness  of  the  whole  would  cease.  Know- 
ledge being  taken  away,  the  rest  would  vanish 
into  nothingness,  since  there  is  '  no  object  without 
subject.'  That  this  will  come  to  pass,  however, 
he  certainly  did  not  believe.  He  has  no  cosmo- 
gony, like  that  of  Hartmann,  ending  in  a  general 
redemption  of  the  universe  by  such  a  collective 
act.  Nor  did  he  hold,  like  his  later  successor 
Mainlander,  that  through  the  conflict  and  gradual 
extinction  of  individualities,  'this  great  world 
shall  so  wear  out  to  nought.'  The  world  for 
him  is  without  beginning  and  without  end.  But 
the  exceptional  individual  can  redeem  himself. 
What  he  does  when  he  has  reached  the  height  of 
holiness  is  by  voluntary  poverty  and  all  other 
privations,  inflicted  for  their  own  sake,  to  break 
and  kill  the  will,  which  he  recognises  as  the 
source  of  his  own  and  of  the  world's  suffering 
existence.  In  his  case  not  merely  the  pheno- 
menon ends  at  death,  as  with  others,  but  the 
being  is  taken  away.  To  be  a  '  world-overcomer ' 
in  this  sense  (as  opposed  to  a  'world-conqueror') 
is  the  essence  of  sanctity  when  cleared  of  all  the 
F  81 


SCHOPENHAUER 

superstitious  dogmas  by  which  the  saints  try  to 
explain  their  mode  of  life  to  themselves. 

The  absolutely  pure  expression  of  this  truth  is 
to  be  found  only  in  philosophy ;  but  of  the 
religions  Buddhism  comes  nearest  to  expressing 
it  without  admixture.  For  the  Buddhist  saint 
asks  aid  from  no  god.  True  Christianity,  how- 
ever,— the  Christianity  of  the  New  Testament 
and  of  the  Christian  mystics, — agrees  both  with 
Buddhism  and  with  Brahmanism  in  ultimate  aim. 
What  spoils  it  for  Schopenhauer  is  the  Judaic 
element.  This,  on  one  side,  infects  it  with  the 
optimism  of  the  Biblical  story  of  creation,  in 
which  God  'saw  everything  that  he  had  made, 
and,  behold,  it  was  very  good.'  On  the  other 
side,  it  contaminates  the  myth  of  original  sin, 
which  bears  in  itself  a  profound  philosophical 
truth,  by  this  same  doctrine  of  a  creative  God ; 
from  which  follows  all  the  injustice  and  irratio- 
nality necessarily  involved  in  the  Augustinian 
theology,  and  not  to  be  expelled  except  with  its 
theism.  Nevertheless,  the  story  of  the  Fall  of 
Man,  of  which  that  theology,  in  its  fundamentally 
true  part,  is  a  reasoned  expression,  is  the  one 
thing,  Schopenhauer  avows,  that  reconciles  him 
to  the  Old  Testament.  The  truth  that  it  clothes 
he  finds  also  among  the  Greeks;  Empedocles, 
82 


ETHICS 

after  the  Orphics  and  Pythagoreans,  having 
taught  that  the  soul  had  been  doomed  to  wander 
because  of  some  antenatal  sin.  And  the  mysticism 
that  accompanies  all  these  more  or  less  pure  ex- 
pressions of  one  metaphysical  truth  he  finds  repre- 
sented by  the  Sufis  even  in  optimistic  Islam ;  so 
that  he  can  claim  for  his  philosophy  a  world-wide 
consent. 

Religion,  if  we  take  this  to  include  mysticism, 
at  once  rises  above  philosophy  and  falls  below  it. 
As  'metaphysics  of  the  people,'  it  is  a  mytho- 
logical expression  of  philosophical  truth  :  as 
mysticism,  it  is  a  kind  of  '  epi-philosophy.' 
Beyond  pure  philosophy  Schopenhauer  does  not 
profess  to  go;  but  he  accepts  what  the  mystics 
say  as  the  description  of  a  positive  experience 
which  becomes  accessible  when  supreme  insight 
is  attained  intuitively.  For  the  philosopher  as 
such,  insight  into  that  which  is  beyond  the  forms 
of  our  knowledge  and  even  beyond  the  will  itself, 
remains  only  conceptual ;  though  it  is  within  the 
province  of  philosophy  to  mark  out  the  place  for 
this.  The  '  something  else '  that  is  left  when  the 
will  has  been  denied,  is  indicated  by  the  '  ecstasy,' 
'illumination,'  'union  with  God/  spoken  of  by 
the  mystics.  Paradoxically,  some  of  the  mystics 
themselves  even  have  identified  it  with  '  nothing ' ; 
83 


SCHOPENHAUER 

but  the  result  of  the  denial  of  the  will  to  live  is  to 
be  called  nothing  only  in  relation  to  the  world  as 
we  know  it.  'On  the  other  hand,  to  those  in 
whom  the  will  has  turned  back  and  denied  itself, 
this  so  very  real  world  of  ours  with  all  its  suns 
and  milky  ways  is — nothing.' 

In  this  terminus  of  his  philosophy,  Schopen- 
hauer recognised  his  kinship  with  Indian  thought, 
of  which  he  was  a  lifelong  student.  To  call  his 
doctrine  a  kind  of  Buddhism  is,  however,  in  some 
ways  a  misapprehension.  Undoubtedly  he  accepts 
as  his  ideal  the  ethical  attitude  that  he  finds  to 
be  common  to  Buddhism  and  the  Christianity  of 
the  New  Testament ;  but  metaphysical  differences 
mark  him  off  from  both.  We  have  seen  that  he 
rejects  the  extra-mundane  God  of  Semitic  deriva- 
tion, adopted  by  historical  Christianity.  Indeed 
he  is  one  of  the  most  pronounced  anti-Jehovists 
of  all  literature.  But  equally  his  belief  in  a  posi- 
tive metaphysical  doctrine  marks  him  off  from 
Buddhism,  according  to  the  account  given  of  it  by 
its  most  recent  students,  who  regard  it  either  as 
ultimately  nihilistic  or  as  having  no  metaphysics 
at  all,  but  only  a  psychology  and  ethics.  Nor  can 
he  be  precisely  identified  with  the  Vedantists  of 
orthodox  Hinduism.  Their  ultimate  reality,  if 
we  are  to  find  an  analogue  for  it  in  European 
84 


ETHICS 

metaphysics,  seems  to  resemble  the  hypostasised 
ego  of  Fichte,  or  the  Kantian  'transcendental 
unity  of  apperception/  much  more  than  it 
resembles  Schopenhauer's  blindly  striving  will  as 
thing-in-itself.  Even  in  practical  ethics,  he  does 
not  follow  the  Indian  systems  at  all  closely. 
Philosophical  doctrines  of  justice  are  of  course 
purely  European ;  and  Schopenhauer  himself 
points  out  the  sources  of  his  own  theory.  In  his 
extension  of  ethics  to  animals,  on  which  he  lays 
much  stress,  he  cites  the  teachings  of  Eastern 
non-Semitic  religions  as  superior  to  the  rest ;  but 
he  does  not  follow  the  Indians,  nor  even  the 
Pythagoreans,  so  far  as  to  make  abstinence  from 
flesh  part  of  the  ideal  He  condemns  vivisection 
on  the  ground  that  animals  have  rights :  certain 
ways  of  treating  them  are  unjust,  not  simply  un- 
coinpassionate.  The  discussion  here  again  is  of 
course  wholly  within  European  thought.  Thus, 
in  trying  to  determine  his  significance  for  modern 
philosophy,  we  may  consider  his  system  in  its 
immediate  environment,  leaving  it  to  more  special 
students  to  determine  how  far  it  received  a 
peculiar  colouring  from  the  Oriental  philosophies, 
of  which,  in  his  time,  the  more  exact  knowledge 
was  just  beginning  to  penetrate  to  the  West. 


CHAPTER   VI 

HISTORICAL  SIGNIFICANCE 

SCHOPENHAUER  is  not  one  of  the  philosophers 
who  have  founded  a  school,  though  he  has  had 
many  disciples  and  enthusiastic  admirers.  The 
pessimism  that  was  for  a  time  a  watchword  with 
certain  literary  groups  has  passed  as  a  mode,  and 
his  true  significance  must  be  sought  elsewhere. 
Of  the  thinkers  who  have  followed  him  in  his 
pessimism,  two  indeed  stand  out  as  the  architects 
of  distinct  systems,  Eduard  von  Hartmann  and 
Philipp  Mainlander  (both  already  incidentally 
referred  to) ;  but  while  they  are  to  be  classed  un- 
questionably as  philosophers,  their  systems  contain 
an  element  that  their  master  would  have  regarded 
as  mythological.  Schopenhauer  declared  as 
clearly  as  any  of  the  Greeks  that  the  phenomenal 
world  is  without  beginning  and  without  end. 
Kant's  positing  of  an  '  antinomy '  on  this  point  he 
regarded  as  wholly  without  rational  justification. 
What  Kant  calls  the  'antithesis,'  namely,  the 
86 


HISTORICAL   SIGNIFICANCE 

infinite  series,  can  be  logically  proved  for  pheno- 
mena. The  '  thesis,'  which  asserts  a  beginning  in 
time,  is  defended  by  mere  fallacies.  Now  Hart- 
mann  and  Mainlander  both  hold,  though  in 
different  fashions,  that  there  is  a  world-process 
from  a  beginning  to  an  end,  namely,  the  extinc- 
tion of  consciousness.  This  is  the  redemption  of 
the  world.  Their  affinity,  therefore,  seems  to  be 
with  the  Christian  Gnostics  rather  than  with  the 
pure  philosophers  of  the  Greek  tradition,  con- 
tinued in  modern  times  by  Bruno,  Spinoza,  and 
Schopenhauer. 

Whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  pessimism 
by  which  Schopenhauer's  mood  is  distinguished 
from  that  of  his  precursors,  few  will  fail  to  recog- 
nise that  special  doctrines  of  his  system  contain 
at  least  a  large  portion  of  truth.  His  theories  of 
Art,  of  Genius,  and  of  Love  are  enough  to  found 
an  enduring  reputation  for  any  thinker,  even  if 
there  were  nothing  else  of  value  in  his  writings. 
But  there  is  much  else,  both  in  systematic  con- 
struction and  in  the  illumination  of  detail.  I 
have  been  inclined  to  put  forward  first  of  all  the 
translation  into  idealistic  terms  of  the  universal 
sentiency  held  by  the  Ionian  thinkers  to  be  in- 
herent in  the  primordial  elements  of  nature. 
While  they  viewed  the  world  as  an  objective 

8; 


SCHOPENHAUER 

thing  having  psychological  qualities,  Schopen- 
hauer, after  the  long  intermediate  process  of 
thought,  could  treat  it  as  phenomenal  object  with 
a  psychological  or  subjective  essence.  For  both 
doctrines  alike,  however,  mind  or  soul  is  im- 
manent. Still,  it  must  be  allowed  that  a  difference 
remains  by  which  Schopenhauer  was  even  more 
remote  than  they  were  from  the  later  Greek 
idealism.  As  they  were  not  materialists,  so  they 
did  not  exclude  reason  from  the  psychical  pro- 
perties of  their  substances.  Schopenhauer,  while 
he  rejected  the  materialism  of  their  ancient  and 
modern  successors  alike,  took  the  step  of  formally 
derationalising  the  elements  of  mind.  This,  no 
doubt,  is  unsustainable  ultimately,  if  reason  is 
ever  to  emerge  from  them.  Yet  the  one-sided- 
ness  of  the  position  has  had  a  peculiar  value  in 
combating  an  equally  one-sided  rationalistic 
idealism.  This  is  recognised  by  clear-sighted 
opponents.  And  Schopenhauer's  calling  the  non- 
rational  or  anti-rational  element  in  the  world 
'will'  helps  to  make  plainer  the  real  problem  of 
evil.  There  is  truth  in  the  Hegelian  paradox  that 
'  pessimism  is  an  excellent  basis  for  optimism.' 
An  optimist  like  Plotinus  saw  that,  even  if  good 
comes  of  evil,  the  case  of  the  optimist  must  fail 
unless  evil  can  be  shown  to  be  a  necessary  con- 
88 


HISTORICAL   SIGNIFICANCE 

stituent  of  the  world.  The  Platonic  and  Neo- 
Platonic  '  matter,'  a  principle  of  diremption  or 
individuation,  like  time  and  space  for  Schopen- 
hauer, was  an  attempt  to  solve  this  problem;  but 
something  more  positive  seemed  to  be  needed 
as  the  source  of  the  stronger  manifestations  of 
evil.  To  the  strength  of  these  Plato  drew  atten- 
tion in  a  passage  (Republic,  x.  610 J)  where  it  is 
acknowledged  that  injustice  confers  a  character  of 
vitality  and  sleeplessness  upon  its  possessor.  In 
the  notion  of  a  blind  and  vehement  striving, 
Schopenhauer  supplies  something  adequate ;  only, 
to  maintain  a  rational  optimism,  it  must  be  re- 
garded as  a  necessary  element  in  a  mixture,  not 
as  the  spring  of  the  whole. 

Much  might  be  said  on  the  teleology  by  which 
he  tries  to  educe  intelligence  from  the  primor- 
dial strife.  Against  his  view,  that  it  is  evolved  as 
a  mere  instrument  for  preserving  races  in  a 
struggle,  another  may  be  set  that  is  ready  to 
hand  in  a  dialogue  of  Plutarch.2  The  struggle 
among  animals,  it  is  there  incidentally  argued, 
has  for  its  end  to  sharpen  their  intelligence. 
Both  these  theories  are  on  the  surface  compatible 

1  Cited  in  one  of  the  introductory  essays  to  Jowett  and 
Campbell's  edition,  vol.  ii. 
a  De  Sollertia  Animalinm,  27. 


SCHOPENHAUER 

with  evolution.  If,  leaving  aside  the  problem  of 
mechanism,  we  try  to  verify  them  by  the  test  of 
results,  the  latter  undoubtedly  seems  the  more 
plausible.  For  if  the  struggle  was  a  means  to 
the  improvement  of  intelligence,  nature  has  suc- 
ceeded more  and  more ;  whereas,  if  her  intention 
was  to  preserve  races,  she  has  continually  failed. 
This  argument  is  at  any  rate  perfectly  valid 
against  Schopenhauer  himself;  for  he  holds  in 
common  with  the  optimistic  teleologists  that 
'  nature  does  nothing  in  vain.' 

I  will  conclude  with  a  few  detached  criticisms 
on  the  ethical  doctrine  which  he  regarded  as  the 
culmination  of  his  system.  The  antithesis,  it 
may  first  be  noted,  between  the  temporary  release 
from  the  vehemence  of  the  will  that  is  gained 
through  art,  and  the  permanent  release  through 
asceticism,  is  not  consistently  maintained.  Scho- 
penhauer admits  that  the  knowledge  which  for 
the  ascetic  is  the  '  quietive '  of  the  will  has  to  be 
won  anew  in  a  perpetual  conflict.  '  No  one  can 
have  enduring  rest  on  earth.'  Again,  revision  of 
his  doctrine  concerning  the  reality  of  the  indivi- 
dual would,  I  think,  necessitate  revision  also  of 
the  position  that  not  only  asceticism  but '  all  true 
and  pure  love,  nay,  even  freely  rendered  justice, 
proceeds  from  seeing  through  the  priiicipium 
go 


HISTORICAL   SIGNIFICANCE 

individuationis.'  If  the  individual  is  in  some 
sense  ultimately  real,  then  love  must  be  to  a  cer- 
tiiiii  extent  literally  altruism.  We  are  brought 
down  to  the  elementary  fact,  in  terms  of  the 
metaphysics  of  ethics,  that  the  object  of  love  is  a 
real  being  that  is  itself  and  not  ourselves,  though 
having  some  resemblance  to  us  and  united  in 
a  larger  whole.  An  objection  not  merely  verbal 
might  indeed  be  taken  to  Schopenhauer's  meta- 
physics of  ethics  strictly  on  his  own  ground.  If 
it  is  purely  and  simply  the  essence  of  ourselves 
that  we  recognise  in  everything,  does  not  this  re- 
duce all  love  finally  to  a  well-understood  egoism  ? 
The  genuine  fact  of  sympathy  seems  to  escape  his 
mode  of  formulation.  And,  in  the  end,  we  shall 
perhaps  not  find  the  ascetic  to  be  the  supreme 
ethical  type.  Of "  the  self-tormenting  kind  of 
asceticism,  it  is  not  enough  to  say  with  Schopen- 
hauer that,  since  it  is  a  world- wide  phenomenon 
of  human  nature,  it  calls  for  some  account  from 
philosophy.  The  account  may  be  sufficiently 
rendered  by  historical  psychology;  the  result 
being  to  class  it  as  an  aberration  born  of  the  illu- 
sions incident  to  a  certain  type  of  mind  at  a  certain 
stage.  Indeed,  that  seems  to  be  the  conclusion 
of  the  Buddhists,  who  claim  to  have  transcended 
it  by  finding  it  superfluous  for  the  end  it  aims  at. 


SCHOPENHAUER 

Let  us  then  take,  as  our  example  of  the  com- 
pleted type,  not  the  monks  of  the  Thebaid,  but  the 
mild  ascetics  of  the  Buddhist  communities.  Does 
not  this  type,  even  in  its  most  attractive  form, 
represent  a  '  second  best '  ?  Is  not  the  final 
judgment  that  of  Plato,  that  to  save  oneself  is 
something,  but  that  there  is  no  full  achievement 
unless  for  the  life  of  the  State  also  the  ideal  has 
been  brought  nearer  realisation  ?  When  there  is 
nothing  in  the  world  but  irredeemable  tyranny  or 
anarchy,  flight  from  it  may  be  the  greatest  success 
possible  as  far  as  the  individual  life  is  concerned ; 
but  this  is  not  the  normal  condition  of  humanity. 
Finally,  may  not  some  actual  achievement,  either 
practical  or,  like  that  of  Schopenhauer,  specula- 
tive, even  if  accompanied  by  real  imperfections  of 
character,  possess  a  higher  human  value  than  the 
sanctity  that  rests  always  in  itself? 


92 


SELECTED  WORKS 

English  Translations 

The  World  at  Will  and  Idea.  Translated  by  R.  B.  HALDASE 
and  J.  KEMP.  3  vols.  1883-6. 

Tivo  Essay t:  I.  On  the  Fourfold  Root  of  the  Principle  of 
Sufficient  Reason.  II.  On  the  Will  in  Nature.  Bohn's 
Philosophical  Library,  1889. 

Religion:  A  Dialogue,  and  other  Essays.  Selected  and  trans- 
lated by  T.  BAILEY  SAUNDEBS.  3rd  ed.,  1891.  [A  series 
of  other  volumes  of  selections  excellently  translated  by  Mr. 
Saunders  has  followed.] 

Selected  Essays  of  Arthur  Schopenhauer.  With  a  Biographical 
Introduction  and  Sketch  of  his  Philosophy.  By  E.  BELFORT 
BAX.  1891. 

The  Basis  of  Morality.  Translated  with  Introduction  and 
Notes  by  A.  B.  BULLOCK.  1903. 

Biographical  and  Expository 

Arthur  Schopenhauer :  His  Life  and  Philosophy.     By  HELEN 

ZIMMERN.     1876. 
Life  of  Arthur  Schopenhauer.    By  Professor  W.  WALLACE. 

1890. 

93 


SCHOPENHAUER 

La  Philosophic  de  Schopenhauer.     Par  TH.  RIBOT.     2nd  ed., 

1885. 

Arthur  Schopenhauer.     Seine   Persdnlichkeit,   seine   Lehre, 
sein  Glaube.     Von  JOHANNES  VOLKELT.    3rd  ed.,  1907. 

Schopenhauer- Lexikon.     Von  JULIUS  FRAUENSTADT     2vol« 
1871. 


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